Journey in Kalos
by 127182818284950
Summary: Ash is in the beginning of his journey in Kalos similar to that in the pokemon episodes. However this is pretty much how I thought the journey should have went. Amourshipping! Might be a rated M in the future.
1. Chapter 1

Hello everyone, this is my first story, and I hope you will like it.

First, some things to keep in mind:

This story starts right after Ash, Clemont and Bonnie arrive at Professor Sycamore's lab with the injured Froakie. I apologize if you don't already know what happened so far, but if you really want to know, you can watch the episodes that lead to them arriving in the lab. I have read other amourshipping stories, and it may be just me, but I'm kinda tired of reading the introduction and didn't feel like writing it. Everything up to this point is pretty much exactly like the episodes.

Second, I don't really like the fact that Ash doesn't seem to age, so he will not be 10 in this story. Other people might also not be as old as they are supposed to be. I believe this is how everyone generally feels. I will tell you the age of any new characters that appear in the chapter. (They have to be crucial to the plot)

This chapter has been fixed (somewhat.)

Ash: 16

Bonnie: 9

Clemont: 16

Professor Sycamore:

Jesse: 24

James: 24

Serena: 15

I don't own pokemon

Ok, I think that's it. Enjoy!

Chapter 1

"Hey! Is Professor Sycamore here?" Ash shouted as he entered the building. Upon hearing a loud yawn, he turned and saw a middle-aged man with black hair walk down the stairs. "On no! Froakie!" he cried as he saw the injured pokemon in my arms. "You're Professor Sycamore?" Ash asked.

"Yes and I also know that Froakie's trainer." He replied. He took Froakie from Ash's arms, and hurried away, with Ash and Bonnie following close behind them. "We need to get him healed right away."

After they've walked a while, Ash decided to ask the professor a question. "So is his trainer coming?" He questioned.

"I'm afraid not, you see, that Froakie didn't get along with his trainer, so he ran away. His trainer gave up on him. Froakie is one of the starter pokemon in this region, this Froakie, however, is very different. This has happened several times before, Froakie just doesn't get along with his trainers."

"What?" Ash thought, "I didn't know that so many people have given up on this froakie…"

His thoughts were interrupted as Clemont ran in, exhausted from all of the running.

"Is… Froakie… gonna be…. Ok?" he asked, while panting.

"Yeah, Professor Sycamore is taking it over to be healed." Bonnie said.

Moments later…

"Don't worry Garchomp, he'll be okay" said Professor Sycamore as he stroked a garchomp's head. Garchomp was watching the nurse heal Froakie intently.

"He has a kind heart," Sycamore explained to Ash and his companions.

"Yeah, he'll be fine," Ash said while touching the garchomp's head.

"Hey no fair! I want to pet him too!" Bonnie exclaimed.

"Of course you can!" said the professor, who chuckled to himself.

Clemont, who wasn't as interested in the garchomp as Ash or his little sister, asked Prof. Sycamore a question.

"I know that you are studying pokemon evolution, but I'm not sure exactly what you are studying. Could you maybe show me what you are doing?"

"Of course!" replied Sycamore enthusiastically, leading Bonnie and Clemont towards a green-house-like room. Ash decided that making sure Froakie was OK was more important and decided to stay with him. "You are great Froakie! Anyone who wouldn't want you can't be very smart. Now you go ahead and rest up!" and with that, Ash went to catch up his friends.

"Froa…" the frog pokemon croaked. It hadn't seen a trainer like this one before."

In the greenhouse, there were many pokemon that Ash have seen, and many that he had never seen before.

"What if I tell you pokemon like garchomp can evolve again?" Sycamore asked them.

"Huh? You mean, garchomp can still evolve?" Ash asked.

"Well, that is what I'm researching. So far, I've concluded that in order to mega evolve, a trainer needs to have a specific mega stone, and a strong bond with the pokemon. These tests have so far produced good results." The professor explained.

Meanwhile…

Jesse, James and Meowth had heard about the mega-evolution data that Prof. Sycamore has, and decided to steal it to benefit their own mechanical creations.

"How are going to steal the data?" James asked.

"I don't know, Meowth said that he had a plan." Replied Jessie.

"Ya, all we need to do is go inside an' pretend to be scientists. They take the bait, we enrage one of their pokemon, and while they're busy trying to control it, we sneak into the professor's research center and nab that info for ourselves!" Meowth explained.

"Genius!" James said.

"Time to go clothes shopping!" cried Jessie.

Later, Team Rocket, dressed up as scientists, barged into Sycamore's lab.

"Well hello fellow scientists!" exclaimed a dressed up Meowth. "We've come to study mega-evolution." Sycamore's lead scientist walked up to the trio. "Well I don't think we asked for more-HEY!" he shouted as Jesse and James tossed a strange device at the garchomp they were studying. As soon as the device landed on Garchomp's neck, it glowed red instead of the regular blue color. "GARRR!" exclaimed the garchomp in pain, as he started firing random hyper beams.

"What's going on?!" everyone turned to see Prof. Sycamore, as well as Ash, Clemont and Bonnie run into the room. "They did it." The lead scientist said as she pointed at the trio that had put the device on Garchomp.

Suddenly they took off their disguises and revealed to everyone that they were wearing uniforms with a large R across their chest.

"Team Rocket!" cried Ash, Clemont and Bonnie. "Wha?!" cried a baffled professor

"Prepare for Trouble!" Jesse sang

"Make that doub-AAHH" James hadn't finished his line when they got hit by a stray hyper beam from the garchomp.

"We're blasting off againnnnnnnnnnnn!" they cried as they flew through the air.

Garchomp, seeing an opportunity to escape, flew through the hole in the roof that Team Rocket had created and launched hyper beams at random buildings and civilians.

"Garchomp, come back!" cried Ash as he ran after him, followed closely by Clemont, Bonnie and Sycamore. "I have to stop him!" Ash thought as he ran through the streets.

The four were shocked to find garchomp causing terror on top of Prism Tower. News reporters had come in helicopters, only to be almost shot down by hyper beams. The reporters had opted to report from the ground instead.

Ash held back a scream. How was he going to get up there? His thoughts were interrupted when Clemont called, "Over here! I think I know a way up!"

Ash followed closely behind Clemont and Bonnie, until they reached a secret entrance.

"Clemont-gear on!" Clemont cried, and a hand reached out from his backpack and turned some dials, causing the blast doors to open.

"Yeah! Science is so cool!" Ash cried before starting to climb the tower.

Clemont and Bonnie tried to follow, but parts of the building collapsed, blocking their path.

"Be careful Ash!" Bonnie shouted behind him.

Meanwhile…

"Hey sweetie, come look at this! Something unbelievable is happening!" Grace cried as she looked dumfounded at the news report on tv.

"Huh?" asked Serena quietly while looking up from what she was eating, obviously not in the mood. She had just finished training to be a rhyhorn racer, and hurt her face when she fell off.

"W-what movie is this?" she asked as she sat down next to her mother, with her eyes glued to the screen.

"This is actually happening right now! Something terrible has happe-"

"Look! Some kid is climbing Prism Tower!" came a voice from the TV as the camera zoomed in on the climbing boy. He was wearing a red hat and a blue jacket, with a pikachu on his shoulders. Serena couldn't help but feel like she knew him from somewhere.

"huh, I wonder if that's garchomp's trainer?" Grace asked

Serena just stared. She thought she knew him from somewhere, but couldn't quite put a finger on it. Where had she meet him before?

So there, I attempted to fix it and make it a little longer, I tried, but there just isn't much that I thought needed to be added. Even so, I think that it's slightly better now.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Okay everyone, I realize that I didn't say everything I wanted to say last chapter, but I thought it was a good place to stop. After all, it is suspenseful to people who don't know the backstory, although I'm sure you all do.

Anyways, another thing I forgot to mention, I will not be limiting the number of moves that a pokemon can learn to 4, however, when battling, rarely will anything use more than 4 moves. If you care so much, just pretend that trainers can swap out moves using tm's after any battle.

One last thing is that I don't know if you guys noticed, but sometimes I capitalized the pokemon's name, and sometimes I didn't. Basically, all the "nicknames" of the pokemon is the species name, so when Ash is calling his pikachu, for example, it will be capitalized, but if someone is referring to pikachu in general, it will be lowercase. To sum that up, Ash's pikachu's name is Pikachu and I will treat it as a name, but not pikachu in general.

Riley: 26

Enough talk, on with the story!

I don't own pokemon

Ash didn't know what happened, but suddenly he was climbing Prism Tower. He didn't stop to think because he knew what he needed to do by instinct. When he reached the top, he saw garchomp writhing in pain.

"Garchomp!" he cried "I know it hurts, but we're here to help you!" "Pika!" agreed Pikachu. Garchomp stopped for a moment, and let Ash approach. "Pikachu! Iron tail on the device on garchomp's neck!" "Pika-chuuuuuuuuuu" shouted the little mouse pokemon as he smashed his tail on the collar. The collar fell off and garchomp stopped struggling. Ash was overjoyed that they got the device off, but the weak ground underneath Pikachu's feet gave away and Pikachu fell off the tower.

"Pikachu!" cried Ash as he dove after his friend.

"Aah!" cried Serena in alarm. She didn't expect to see someone do something so suicidal on TV. She immediately grabbed the nearest thing-a pillow-and hugged it so hard that if it was once alive, it wouldn't have been after she let go. She tried to stay calm-this had to be a movie and a prank made by her mother!

Meanwhile back at Prism Tower…

Ash was falling off the tower, and awaited his death. Just then, a strange trainer in a blue cloak yelled out:

"Lucario! Extremespeed!"

Immediately his lucario jumped up and grabbed Ash as he was falling dangerously close to ground, and landed safely.

Ash opened his eyes and grinned.

"Riley! What are you doing in Kalos?"

"Lucario and I had a strange dream telling us to come here, I'll explain about it later, it seems that right now, the news reporters want you." Riley smiled and lightly pushed Ash towards the cameras and reporters.

Serena let out a breath of relief as the boy landed safely. "What a relief!" She cried.

Just then, the cameras zoomed in on the boy's face and Serena gasped in shock.

"What?" her mother ventured to ask.

"That boy… no! It couldn't be!" Serena suddenly cried

"Who?" Grace asked

"Ash!" came the reply.

"Ash?" the name sounded familiar, but Grace couldn't recall. Suddenly she realized "Hey isn't that your old friend from Kanto?" but sweatdropped when she found that Serena had already rushed upstairs.

Serena couldn't believe her luck. Ash was in Kalos! She remembered back about 9 years ago in a certain summer camp…

_Flashback_

"Hey! Where is everybody?" cried a young Serena

Just then a wild poliwag jumped out from a bush and startled her.

"Aah!" cried Serena as she fell on the ground and hit her knee very hard.

"I knew I didn't even want to come to summer camp!" Serena sobbed. "MAAAAAAAMAAAAA!"

Just then, she heard a rustling in a bush. "Poliwag?" said the boy as he got out of the bush

"Huh? You're hurt? It's ok, my name's Ash, watch this!" he said as he pulled out a blue handkerchief that he kept in his pocket. "Pain, go away!" he chanted as he tied the handkerchief to Serena's injured knee.

"He's soooooo cute!" Serena thought, and enjoyed the attention she was receiving. "I still can't get up," she finally said. "Never give up 'til the end!" Ash told her and pulled her up. Doing so, however, caused Serena to fall into Ash's arms. "This is nice!" thought Serena, and blushed furiously, but soon she remembered that her mother told her not to trust strangers, and pulled away.

"See? You got up!" Ash smiled, seemingly to not notice that they had just hugged. "C'mon, let's get back to camp!" and led her by the hand back to camp.

After that, Serena, who left only a few minutes' walk away from Ash's house, got to know him a lot and soon they became best of friends. They had shared many moments playing and laughing together; Serena had always felt better when she was around Ash.

Unfortunately, about a year later, Serena's mom decided that she would gain more reputation as a rhyhorn racer if she moved to Kalos. Serena was crushed that she had to leave her friends, and was even sadder that she had to leave Ash, but there was nothing she could do.

"Goodbye Ash…" Serena said as she left towards the moving truck that was about leave her house with all of her things.

"Wait!" Ash said as he grabbed Serena's hand "Keep this." And with that, he pressed the blue handkerchief-the same one he used on the day they met-into Serena's hands.

She had treasured it since then, and vowed to herself that she would find him again.

However, after 5 or 6 years, she started to lose hope.

Her mother wouldn't let her go on an adventure when she turned 10, and insisted that she become a rhyhorn racer. Serena eventually became more and more depressed.

At first, she had a sassy attitude towards her mom, and at first, she would complain when she had to practice rhyhorn racing, or when Fletchling woke her up. But recently, she felt too sad to complain and had a slightly gentler attitude.

_End of Flashback_

Serena brushed away the lone tear that threatened to fall off her face. "That was a long time ago! Things are different now!"

"That definitely was Ash!" thought Serena. "I have to convince mom to let me go find him! I just have to!"

Grace decided to leave Serena alone, when suddenly she rushed down the stairs.

"Mom! Can I go on my own journey? Please?"

"Not this again!" Grace thought and said "Absolutely not!" but seeing the hurt in Serena's eyes, she decided to compromise with her.

"Okay, I'll let you get your own pokemon, but you still have to stay home."

Seeing as this is probably the best she can get from her mom, Serena sulked back upstairs.

"Well, at least I won't be lonely anymore!" she thought. Just then, she saw a shooting star streak across the sky. "I wish… I wish that Ash will somehow come to my house." She knew it was a long shot, but at least it couldn't hurt, could it?

The sudden realization of how unlikely that is to happen brought tears to her eyes. She got into her bed and started sobbing. "I guess I'll never get to meet Ash again…" she thought as she cried herself to sleep.

The next day, back at the Sycamore lab…

"…So we decided to come and check Kalos out, after all, we both sensed a strong aura coming from this part of the world." Riley said as he finished his story. "Now that we are here, it seems that the strong aura we detected is actually coming from you!"

"M-me?" asked Ash, hardly believing it.

"Yes, I believe that your aura is strong-almost too strong-and I came here to help you learn to control it." Riley said, his Lucario nodded in agreement.

"Also, we stopped by one of your old friends…" "Who?" Ash asked

Not saying anything, Riley just tossed a pokeball from his belt onto the floor and Ash gasped.

"You?"


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I guess I don't have much to say this time. So with that said, on with the story!

I don't own pokemon

"Riolu!" the pokemon cried as he is released from his ball.

"That's right Ash, this is the riolu you saved from Hunter J, the one that knows aura sphere." Riley calmly replied.

"Y-you mean Ash already knows him?" Clemont asked

"Awwwwww he's soooooo cute!" Bonnie exclaimed whilst jumping forward to hug it.

The siblings, along with Prof. Sycamore had stayed so quiet that Ash forgot that they were there.

"Yeah, I saved him from a poacher." Ash said

"And he is now yours." Riley added

"R-really?" Ash said, but riolu, who already likes Ash calmly snatched the ball from Riley's hands and handed it the Ash.

"Ri! Riolu!" It barked

"See, he likes you" said Riley, "And if you don't mind, Lucario and I would like to travel with you through Kalos, since we're here already. Is that OK?"

"Of course." Said Ash, who jumped up and struck a victory sign. "Yeah! I just caught a… riolu!" "Pi Pika!" Pikachu happily sang.

"not really…" muttered Clemont and Bonnie.

Suddenly, Sycamore's assistant came over and told him that he got a call. "I'll be right back, said the professor."

Moments, later…

"Ash, can I ask you for a favor? There is a girl who is just starting on her journey and I am asking you to deliver the starter pokemon to her house so she can pick one, is that OK?"

"Sure, I'd be happy to." Ash joyfully replied.

But just as they were about to leave, the froakie Ash had saved jumped out pushing a pokeball towards Ash.

"Froa… " It said.

"You know, I think Froakie wants to go with you, and since he technically has no trainer right now, I think he should!" Prof. Sycamore said.

"Froakie, wanna come with us on our journey?" Ash said while holding the ball in front of him.

"Froakie!" it happily shouted and went into the ball.

*ping*

"Yeah! I just caught a Froak-"

"Alright we know, now let's goooooo" said Bonnie as he pushed Ash towards the door.

"Hey I didn't get to finish my line!" he cried as he got pushed outside, earning chuckles from Riley and the Professor.

"Well, we'd better make our way to Vaniville town." Said Riley whilst tipping his hat towards the Professor.

And with that, Ash, accompanied by Clemont, Bonnie and Riley, started towards Vaniville town.

An hour or two later…

"This must be the house." Said Ash as they made their way into Vanivilletown. He went up the front steps, knocking on the door gently. The brunette who opened the door froze when she saw him.

"A-ash?" she asked cautiously

Ash was extremely confused, until he heard a voice from the inside of the house. A voice that he recognized immediately. Ash felt his heart beat faster.

"Mom, who's at the door?" Serena asked before looking outside herself.

When their eyes met, they both froze.

"Do you guys know each other or something?" asked Bonnie.

Finally, Serena wrapped her arms around Ash into a hug, and said "Ash! It's been so long!" "Yeah, good to see you again too." Ash replied and returned the hug. They didn't catch the curious glances of Riley and Serena's mother, or the smirk that Bonnie had on her face. She was going to talk to Ash about it later.

"So are you the new trainer waiting for a starter pokemon?" Ash asked Serena.

"Yup! And I've already decided who I wanted." Serena happily replied.

"Oh? And who might that be?" Asked Ash.

"Fennekin!" Serena said as she took Fennekin's ball out of the case.

"Good choice!" Ash said and smiled at her. Serena immediately felt her cheeks turn red. "And here's your pokedex." Ash said as he handed her a red device.

They all sat and talked for the rest of the afternoon. Serena particularly liked hearing Ash describing his journey in other regions. "He's been to so many places! And my mom won't even let me leave this town.." thought Serena.

"You guys traveled a long way, by the time you get halfway back to Lumiose city, it will be dark already. So why don't you guys stay here for tonight?" asked Grace.

"Yeah sure!" Said Ash-a little too enthusiastically- and caught the attention of Riley, who smirked slightly.

"Ash, Clemont and Bonnie can sleep with sleeping bags in the guest room. And Riley, if you don't mind, will sleep on the couch downstairs." Grace said

"Wow thanks!" said Bonnie as she ran up the stairs. "She just gave me the perfect opportunity to talk to Ash!" she thought.

Everyone else laughed at how energetic Bonnie was, and followed her upstairs to get ready for bed.

Bonnie waited until Clemont was taking a shower, so it would just be Ash in the room. She sat down next to Ash.

"You like her, don't you?" she asked bluntly.

"Hn! Wha-?" Ash mumbled as his cheeks turned red.

"So that's a yes!" Bonnie declared triumphantly. "It's ok, you can tell me. Your secret is safe with me."

"O-ok, yes, I do like Serena very much." Ash admitted

"So why don't you tell her?" Bonnie asked.

"Well, I don't know what to think of them." Ash said.

"Them?" Bonnie asked

"Yeah, girls in general. I like them, but the last time I-" he trailed off.

"Ohhhhhhh. You've had a bad experience with them. What happened?"

Ash sighed. "When I was beginning to travel, I liked Misty a lot, but when I finally had the courage to ask her out, she said that she already was dating Gary. I was crushed."

"So that's why you don't want to ask, because you're afraid of being rejected again. What would you do if that happened? What comes to your mind first?"

"Suicide." Ash admitted "But that probably won't happen, I might run away or something instead."

Bonnie gasped, but then said "You should tell her. If she rejects you, it will be hard, but then you can move on!"

"Yeah….. I guess….."

Meanwhile…

Serena was brushing her teeth when she heard Ash talking with Bonnie in the other room.

"Well, I don't know what to think of them."

She decided that she wanted to know what they were talking about, and walked quietly until she was just outside the door.

"When I was beginning to travel, I liked Misty a lot, but when I finally had the courage to ask her out, she said that she already was dating Gary. I was crushed." As soon as she heard that, Serena panicked. He meant he liked her in the past right?

She was so lost in thought that she didn't hear the rest of the conversation. Realizing that Ash will probably leave tomorrow, Serena decided that she had to talk to him.

Knocking gently on the door, she waited for a response.

"Come in," Bonnie said.

Walking in, Serena said "Ash, it's kind of crowded in this room, you can come sleep in my room." Blushing while she was talking.

Ash wasn't sure what to think of this, until Bonnie nudged him with her elbow. "C'mon it won't be that bad. She doesn't have cooooties." Purposely making the last word sound as immature as possible.

"Uh, ok, let me get my stuff." Ash finally said. Then he followed Serena to her room. Not a minute later, Clemont walked out of the bathroom. "Hey, where's Ash?" he asked. "Long story," replied Bonnie and went to take a shower.

In Serena's room, Ash had just finished spreading out his sleeping bag when he was tapped on the shoulder. "Ash, can I talk to you?" Asked Serena. He looked at her and smiled "Sure, about what?" "I don't know, I haven't really had many people to talk to in the past year or so." Replied Serena.

They talked about random things that aren't very interesting for about half an hour. Serena didn't know what they were talking about anymore, but it gave her an excuse to look into Ash's eyes for long periods of time. The sudden thought that Ash was here for only tonight jolted Serena back to reality.

"Ash, there's been something that I want to tell you…" Serena started.

"I'm listening." Ash said, hoping that she shared the feelings he had for her.

"I-I, really like you… more than a friend." She quickly added, blushing furiously.

Ash couldn't believe it. "I've been feeling the same way towards you for a long time." He finally said

"R-really?" Asked Serena and pulled Ash into a hug.

"Yes." Ash said as he lifted her chin up and kissed her. Serena was surprised at first, but then kissed back passionately. Then suddenly, Serena remembered what happened at Prism Tower. "Ash!" She exclaimed, almost crying "What were you thinking when you jumped off of Prism Tower?! If you had died, I don't know how-" Then Ash kissed her again, smirked and said "I promise I will never make any suicidal jumps again." "Very funny" Serena said, pretending to be mad and giving Ash a playful hit.

"Ok, we should probably go to sleep. We all have a big day tomorrow!" Ash said and got off the bed and walked towards his sleeping bag.

Realizing that this may possibly be the last time she sees him, Serena said "W-wait, it might… uh… get cold tonight! Yeah! A-and y-you might be cold if you s-sleep on the floor. W-why don't you sleep on the bed?"

Ash gave her a curious glance. "So what about you?" he asked, although he already knew the answer.

"I-I will sleep here too." Serena said whilst blushing. "Now you've done it Serena," she thought, "now Ash will not agr-"

"Sure." Ash said as he got into bed with her.

"T-thanks Ash." Serena said and rested her head on his chest, and her hand on his stomach. "He has a large six-pack!" Serena thought.

"Good night Serena."

"G' night Ash"

Suddenly, hearing a soft snoring sound, Serena realized that Ash must've fallen asleep.

"This is not so bad. Even if it's just for tonight…" thought Serena as she yawned. Suddenly, realizing that her wish had been granted and also getting more than she could wish for, Serena decided to not think about tomorrow and focus on the strong chest she was sleeping on. Then, feeling tired from all of the day's events, she fell into a deep slumber.

Thanks for reading guys!


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

BTW, my grammar might be incorrect, don't be too harsh on me please!

I don't own pokemon

"I'd better go check on Serena," thought Grace as he made her way towards Serena's room. She gently opened the door and peeked in…and tried to hold in a shout of rage.

"That boy…is sleeping…with my daughter!" she thought and was about to wake him up and throw him out of the house, when a hand caught her shoulder.

"Grace? I need to talk to you for a little bit." Riley said. Without waiting for her response, he continued "I noticed this afternoon, while we were talking in the living room, that not only did Ash show signs of liking Serena, but Serena also seemed to like Ash."

Grace opened her mouth, but couldn't say anything. She didn't know what to make of this situation. On one hand, she was happy that Serena found someone who actually cares for her, and not just her appearance, but on the other hand, how could she let her only daughter go with people that were almost stranger?

"Serena also told me that you wouldn't let her go on a journey, and no offense, but I think that's foolish, especially since you are forcing her to leave Ash… again. I suggest that you reconsider that because Serena will definitely be crushed if you don't let her go."

"Absolutely not!" Grace fumed, but Riley held up his hand and said "I know you are her mother, and you make the ultimate decision, but I suggest you give it a thought. Serena might not be able to take it if she can't go with Ash, and we'll make sure she stays safe too."

Grace pondered about what Riley said. "She has been growing more and more depressed lately…" Grace finally said and Riley nodded his head in understanding. "I'll-I'll think about it." Grace said and Riley tipped his hat at Grace and said "Alright that's it, I'm going to go sleep." And with that, he made his way downstairs, towards the couch.

"Am I really willing to let Serena go with them?" thought Grace as she made her way to her room, trying to digest what she had just heard and ignored the energetic blonde girl that ran past her, in the direction of Serena's room.

"Heehee, they look so cute together…" said Bonnie mischievously once she was back in her own room, for she had just peeked into Serena's room and saw her sleeping together with Ash.

"Did you say something?" asked a drowsy Clemont.

"N-no! Not at all!" cried Bonnie as she giggled and got into a sleeping bag, thinking about if she will ever find a wife for Clemont that would love him like Serena (obviously) loves Ash.

The next morning…

Ash awoke to find that his chest felt heavy. He rubbed the weariness from his eyes away and found Serena snuggling up with his chest and smiled, remembering all of last night. "She's so beautiful…" Ash thought. Not wanting to wake her up, and he decided to watch her sleep. A minute or two later, Serena woke up and found that she was lying on Ash's chest. Serena's face immediately turned crimson red.

"Good morning Ash!" she finally said.

"You too, hey, wanna go have breakfast? I'm starving!" Ash said as his stomach made a few unhappy noises.

Serena realized that she may never have this chance again once Ash leaves. "Five more minutes," She begged while looking at Ash with pleading eyes.

Ash wasn't sure why Serena was suddenly like this, and asked "I-is there something wrong? You can always talk to me about it."

"Well, it's just, I don't know if I'll ever see you again after you leave…" Serena started.

"What!?" Ash was shocked, he had assumed Serena would tag along when they left. "Don't you want to come with us?"

"Yes, I really do, but my mom won't let me…" Serena said, as her eyes became watery.

"Don't worry, just ask again, maybe she'll let you go this time." Said Ash.

"Ok…" Serena said. She knew what her answer was going to be already, but couldn't help but cling to that sliver of hope that her mom would say yes. "But can we stay here for five more minutes, just in case?" Serena replied.

"Ok, fine…" said Ash as his stomach growled again. He, however, didn't mind, and tried to press this memory into his brain.

Moments later...

His friends were already gathered around the breakfast table as Ash and Serena walked downstairs. "Alright! We finally can start eating!" cried Bonnie. "Sorry…" said Ash sheepishly while scratching the back of his head. "Bonnie! Be polite!" cried Clemont. And with that, everyone started eating the pancakes, bacon, eggs and hash browns that were on the table in front of them.

"Thanks for the breakfast Grace!" cried a satisfied Ash, after they were done eating.

"Yes it truly was wonderful." Riley said, and Bonnie and Clemont nodded in agreement.

"No problem…" said Grace cautiously. Still not trusting Ash, she watched him out of the corner of her eye as she washed dishes.

"Mom? Can I go travel with Ash and his friends?" Serena suddenly blurted.

Grace, who had been dreading this question, thought for a moment and said "No, I think you would be safer staying home."

"But when we travel together, we would all be safe…" Serena started

"You're staying home, end of discussion." Grace said and went back to washing dishes, oblivious to Serena running upstairs and into her room, and of the frustrated glance Riley gave her.

As she closed the door, tears that had threatened to fall the night before and earlier that day finally fell. "Why!? Ash comes to my house, and I can't even go with him!" Serena sobbed in her room "This is probably worse than if he hadn't showed up in the first place!"

Serena continued to cry for a few minutes, and stopped to try to make her face look as if she had never cried in the first place. Knowing that Ash will be sad too, she decided to go say goodbye to him. Then, she walked downstairs to see Ash and his friends about to leave.

"Goodbye Ash." Serena said as she pulled him into a hug, unconcerned about the glances she was getting, and trying hard not to cry.

"G-goodbye Serena," Said Ash, who also seems to be upset that Serena can't travel with them. As they walked out the door, the final bit of Serena's heart that was still intact finally broke. Ash turned around and waved, and she wove back. She watched them as they walked down the road, until they couldn't be seen anymore. Then she ran upstairs to her room and locked the door. Ignoring her mom outside of the door, she curled on up on her bed and started to cry.

So how is it so far? Please review!

This was relatively short compared to maybe Chapter's 2 & 3, but there is a lot of new things, including amourshipping in it.

What is going to happen to Serena since Ash is gone? Find out in the next few chapters!


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Hello everyone, I just wanted to say thank you for reading my story, I really appreciate it! However, I haven't gotten many reviews, and I would really like to know what you guys think of it. So if you can, please leave me a review, even if it's just "I think it's great" because I want to know if I am doing a good job or not. Thanks!

I don't own pokemon

"Serena?" Grace said outside her daughter's room. She had been in there for a hour now, and she still hasn't stopped crying yet. Grace didn't know that she cared for that boy THAT much. Now she kind of regretted telling her that she can't go with her.

Finally, the crying stopped and Serena unlocked the door. Grace walked in and sat on Serena's bed with her. Her eyes were puffy from crying.

"Honey, I know you're feeling sad…" said Grace, breaking the silence.

"NO! You have NO IDEA how I feel! Ash was the only boy I ever liked! The only one I've ever loved! I thought I never would see him again, but I did, and you won't let me go travel with him!" Serena shouted.

"But, you're my only daughter, and I just want you to feel like you have a family." Grace said.

"Ash and his friends make a better family than you! They think about each other, and you think about yourself!" Serena said as she started crying again.

Grace didn't know that Serena felt that way, and was suddenly angry with herself. Why hadn't she realized that Ash cared for her, and would make sure she is protected in the wild before? Sighing, Grace made a decision that would impact her life forever.

"Serena, I realize now how hard it makes you feel, and I'm truly sorry for not letting you go with Ash. I know he cares about you, and doesn't just like you because of how you feel." Grace finally said.

"H-how *sniff* does that h-help now that h-he's *sniff* gone?" Serena managed to get out between sobs.

"Well, honey, I've decided to… let you go travel with Ash." Serena immediately stopped crying.

"Y-you mean it mom?" Serena cautiously asked. When Grace nodded, Serena tackled her with a hug and said "Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!" but Grace responded "Now, before you go, I have some rules for you to follow. First, you have to promise to call me every week, otherwise I will call Riley and you'll be in big trouble. Second, you're only 15 years old, and you don't need to… get pregnant."

Serena blushed at her mom's comment and said "Y-yes mom, I'll remember."

"Now hurry up and pack a bag, Ash will probably be headed to Lumiose City to return the other starts to Professor Sycamore, but after that he'll go to Santalune City, and he'll want a gym battle, so you should be able to catch up to him." Grace said.

"Right away!" Serena happily obliged.

A few minutes later, Serena walked out the door and waved at her mom. "Bye mom, I'll promise to call you!" she called out as she happily skipped down the road.

"She doesn't seem so depressed now…" Grace thought, and went back inside.

Ash and his friends had made it to the Santalune forest when they decided to stop and take a break for lunch. Clemont began to cook, while Riley took Ash aside and said "Ash, we need to awaken your aura. If anything happens on our journey, it just might save your life, which is really important." "Ok sure." Ash said nonchalantly.

While Riley was teaching Ash how to control his aura, Bonnie decided to look around a little bit. A dedenne came out of the undergrowth and tried to find food. "Awwww, Clemont won't you catch it for me please!?" Clemont sighed and said "ok…." He took out a pokeball and tossed it at the dedenne, after a few seconds, the ball gave a satisfying *ping* signifying that dedenne was caught. "Yayyyyy!" Bonnie exclaimed and reached for the ball. Letting her new dedenne out, she said "Hello Dedenne, my name's Bonnie. I hope we can become friends." Dedenne squealed in happiness as Bonnie gave it pokemon food. "Wahhhh!" Clemont screamed, as he had burned all of the food while catching the dedenne. "Guess I'll have to restart…"

Meanwhile, Ash had just mastered the basics of using his aura: making aura spheres and putting up barricades. He was sweating a lot, and hoped that they could eat quickly so they can go to Santalune city for a shower. To his dismay, he found out that Clemont had accidentally burned all of the food. "Guess we can do some regular training!" he said to Pikachu. "Pika!" cried Pikachu, happy that his trainer is more or less back to his old self. He had been sure that Ash liked Serena, but Serena stayed behind at her house! What a selfle- "Wow Pikachu! Look at that pokemon!" Ash cried, breaking his train of thought. "A fletchling!" he said as he consulted the pokedex. "Wow let's catch it!" cried an enthusiastic Ash. "Pikachu use thunderbolt!" "Pikachuuuuuuu!" pikachu cried as he shot a bolt of lightning at the fletchling, upon hitting it, static electricity could be seen around the fletchling's wings. "Alright! Go pokeball!" After several shakes, the ball stopped and pinged. "Yea! I just caught a fletchling! Our next friend!" cried Ash, "Pikapii!" Pikachu cried in joy. Then Ash did some actual training with Froakie, Riolu, and of course, Pikachu in preparation for the gym battle.

After training, he decided that he would use Froakie, Riolu and Pikachu in his next gym battle, because they trained hard, Fletchling was in no shape to battle, and the other froakie and chespin weren't technically his.

Meanwhile…

Serena was running along the path, not bothering to stop for anything. She saw a bunnelby, then a fletchling, a pansage, a scatterbug, and even a pikachu, but she just kept going. "If I keep this up, I'll be with Ash again today!" she thought happily.

Fennekin, however, was confused about why they had to run. She was enjoying being out of her pokeball, but couldn't understand why her trainer was in such a hurry. They had been running for maybe an hour, couldn't they stop so they could eat? As if she read Fennekin's thoughts, Serena suddenly said "I'm sorry Fennekin, I'll get you some food later, but the faster we run, the sooner I'll get to see Ash again!" Fennekin sighed as her trainer ran faster, knowing that she will probably have to wait for lunch. Reluctantly, she ran after Serena.

About 20 minutes later…

Serena kept running until she got to the top of a large hill, then suddenly stopped, causing a very startled Fennekin to run into her heels. "Fennekin?" she asked, wondering why they had stopped. "It's him! I caught up to him!" thought Serena as she saw Ash, who seemed to have just finished training. "Ash!" She cried as she ran down the hill. Ash looked up, wondering who was calling him-and smiled. "Serena!" he exclaimed as she tackled him into a hug. "Hey, I'm sweating right now!" Ash said, not wanting to leave a bad impression on Serena. "I couldn't care less." Serena replied smoothly and sighed in happiness. Then she broke the hug and asked "A-ash, will you be my boyfriend?" "Of course I will!" He replied immediately. "Now let's get back to the other, lunch is probably ready by now." And as if on cue, Ash's stomach growled. Ash and Serena giggled as they walked the short distance to where everyone else was.

"Wow, so Serena, you came all this way just to find Ash?" asked Clemont when they had gotten there.

"Yup! And now he's my boyfriend!" Serena said, causing Ash to blush slightly.

"Congratulations." Riley said to Ash approvingly.

"I always knew that Serena would come find Ash. Heeheehee" Bonnie whispered to Dedenne, who also let out a amused "Dedenne!" "What did you say to Dedenne?" Serena wondered out loud. "Oh nothing! Nothing at all!" replied Bonnie with a smirk on her face.

Then they had a wonderful lunch consisting on berries, berries and more berries. Oran berries! Sitrus berries! Cheri berries! Any and all berries! Even Ash didn't eat that much.

"Hey, it was either this or the charcoal that I made before!" Clemont said in his defense. Luckily, the pokemon didn't seem to mind.

After they ate and cleaned up, the 5 humans recalled their pokemon, except for Ash's pikachu, Clemont's dedenne, (which is being taken care of by Bonnie) Serena's Fennekin, and Riley's Lucario. Then they all started towards Santalune City.

"This life is so much better than rhyhorn racing…" said Serena as she happily walked while holding Ash's hand. "I could get used to this…"

Meanwhile, Kalos, unknown location:

A man in a business suit sat at his desk. "Useless!" he roared "No one could get the data from Sycamore?" "We tried sir, but some people interfered and we were unsuccessful." Said a grunt. "If you wish, I will make sure that they won't be able to interfere, or do much of anything…" Everyone turned to look the new captain, who was always dressed in a black cloak and allowed no one to see his true identity. "Very well, Eldritch, make sure they don't stay alive." The man said as the captain known as Eldritch bowed his head and walked off. "Soon," he thought, "I will get to see you again… Ash Ketchum."

Well, how do you like it so far? Please let me know!

Side note: after this week, I will start to become busier, and might not upload daily. However, I will not forget about this story, so check everyfew days to see if I added a new chapter.

Thanks!


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

One thing: Sometimes I may refer to a pokemon as "it" instead of he or she because I read what I write in my head, and I think it sounds better, if anyone is really against it, please let me know with a review.

Also, sorry for not having this chapter up by yesterday, but I was busy, and this is (slightly) longer than other chapters. I hope it was worth the wait.

Eldritch: 18

I don't own pokemon

The sun started to set as our heroes reached Santalune City. Ash wanted to go challenge the gym leader right away, but his friends convinced him not to; it was too late and the gym leader was probably not accepting challenges this late. They finally decided to go check into the pokemon center for the night.

"We'd like four rooms please." Riley said. Nurse Joy looked at the group with a questionable glance, so Clemont added "My sister Bonnie is not a trainer, so she can't get her own room yet." "But the issue is, we only have three rooms available." Said Nurse Joy. "A one person room, and two two-person rooms, so you guys won't get individual rooms."

"That's ok!" Serena blurted "Ash and I can share right?"

"Uh… yea, sure." Ash said while looking down at the ground and blushing.

They first reached Riley's room, who said "Goodnight, see you all tomorrow." Before retreating into his room.

As they reached Clemont and Bonnie's room, Clemont walked in right away, but Bonnie stayed outside. "Have fun you guys! But don't be too loud." She giggled and ran into the room, leaving Ash and Serena outside, both blushing.

When Ash and Serena got to their room, Ash said "You can shower first, I have to do some thinking." Serena was a little bit concerned, as Ash usually never thinks much, but realized that it may be about the gym battle, so she agreed.

After getting ready for bed for 30 minutes, Serena walked out of the bathroom, to let Ash know it was his turn. Ash, not wanting to delay sleeping much longer, finished showering and getting ready for bed in 10 minutes. Serena, who was waiting for Ash in the bed, snuggled up to him as soon as he got in too. "Y'know, I really could get used to this." Serena said after a while. Ash laughed. "Yeah, me too. Goodnight Serena," "Goodnight Ash." Serena replied and fell asleep on top of Ash's chest.

Serena woke up feeling very happy. Then she realized that she was in a hotel room sleeping with Ash. She looked up at his face and thought "He is so cute when he sleeps," after lying there for about five minutes, she decided it was time to get up. She put on some new clothes and went to the bathroom to brush her hair. When came out of the bathroom, Ash was already up and changed.

"Hey, let's go get breakfast." He said.

"Sure!" Serena chirped with a big smile on her face.

Everyone else was already eating when they got to the cafeteria.

"So how did you guys sleep?" Clemont asked.

"Did you guys sleep, or did you guys stay up…. doing something else?" Bonnie grinned mischieviously.

"W-we slept very well, thanks for asking!" Ash said while blushing. "Yeah, we didn't stay up doing anything!" Serena added, also blushing.

"If you say so," Bonnie said, then whispered something to Dedenne, causing him to squeak in laughter.

"L-let's just go challenge the gym now." Said Ash and everyone agreed.

When they got to the gym, a familiar face greeted Ash. "Alexa!" he cried at a distance while Serena got butterflies in her stomach. What if he likes her more than me? She thought, but as they got closer, Serena sighed in relief because Alexa was a loooooot older than Ash, so it was safe to assume that Ash likes her better. They spent a few minutes introducing everyone. "Ready to challenge my sister Ash?" Alexa asked when the introductions were over. "You bet!" he cried while pumping his fist in the air.

They walked to a battlefield in a greenhouse like room. On the other side of the field stood a middle-aged woman with blonde hair and a camera. Everyone but Ash walked to the sidelines to cheer him on.

"Hello, my name is Viola. I'm the Satalune City gym leader." She said.

"I challenge you to a battle!" Ash cried enthusiastically.

"Great! This will be a 2 on 2 battle, with only the challenger being allowed substitutions." Viola explained.

"2 on 2?" Ash thought "I thought I would get to use 3 pokemon! Oh well, I guess… I guess I will use Pikachu and… well, I'll cross that bridge when I get there I guess."

"Alright! Pikachu, you're up!"

"Go Surskit!" Viola cried as she tossed a ball onto the field. "Surrr!" the little bug cried as it was let out of its pokeball.

"Alright! Pikachu use thunderbolt!"

"Surskit, start things off with a signal beam!"

The two attacks met in the center of the field, and exploded. 'Iron tail' Ash told Pikachu using his aura, a handy trick that he had learned while training the day before.

"Why isn't he calling anything?" Viola thought "Must be a rookie." Then, she called to surskit "Signal beam again!" "Surrr!" the water bug cried as it launched another attack towards where Pikachu was. Signal beam tore through the smoke from the explosion to hit… an empty field!

"Huh?" Viola wondered how Pikachu acted without Ash's command. Then she was shocked when Pikachu smashed with its tail and sent Surskit flying backwards.

"Errrrrr," grumbled Viola "Use ice beam on the ground!"

"Surrrr" says surskit as it used ice beam on the ground, making it as slippery as an ice rink.

"Now start skating!"

Surskit starts gliding around the ice, making it hard for Pikachu to hit it.

'Careful Pikachu, use Electro ball to smash the ground beneath you.'

"Pikaaaaa!" he cried as he smashed the electric ball that formed on the end of his tail onto the ice, breaking it and creating small area of ground to stand on.

"An interesting move, maybe I can use it to make a machine…." Said Clemont lost in thought.

"Uh! Probably a machine that can explode itself instead of having you do it?" Bonnie asked, but Clemont didn't hear her at all.

'Now use thunderbolt' Ash said through the aura link.

"Pikaaa!" He cried while launching the attack at the skating surskit.

"Wahh?" Vila said dumbfounded. "How can that pikachu attack on its own?"

Meanwhile, Serena was asking herself the same question. Was Ash hiding something from her?

"Surskit! Use sticky web!" Viola cried in desperation. But it was too late.

Ash smirked as the thunderbolt connected with surskit, causing it to scream in pain. Then it fell to the ground with swirls for eyes.

"Surskit is unable to battle, the winner is Pikachu!" The referee called.

"Yay, go Ash! Beat Viola!" Serena cheered on the sidelines, making Ash smile while slightly blushing.

"Ok, go Vivillon!" Viola cried as she tossed a ball into the air.

"Vivillon!" it said.

"Vivillon, careful, the opponent can attack without directions." Viola warned.

"Ok, return Pikachu," Ash said while taking a ball off his belt he thought about who he wanted to use next. "Well, I'll always have Pikachu as a backup, but I can't rely on that. I just got Froakie, but I've known Riolu for a long time…" thinking to here, he confidently reached for a pokeball and shouted "Go Riolu!"

On the sidelines, Riley's Lucario grinned, obviously pleased with how hard Riolu had trained with him the day before.

Riolu struggled to stand up on the ice, and Viola grinned. She could still win this!

"Vivillon, use solarbeam!" Viola commanded.

"Quickly Riolu, use force palm to shatter the ice!"

"Rio-lu!" he cried as he smashed his palm into the icy ground. The ice in the arena shattered and broke into a fine mist. Just after that, Vivillon felt satisfied with the amount of energy it had stored, and launched a solarbeam at Riolu.

'Dodge,' ash instructed Riolu with his aura, and Riolu gracefully somersaulted away from the solarbeam.

"Alright, Riolu use sand attack!" Ash called.

"Maybe this riolu has to be given instructions to attack, that pikachu must be special." Violu thought.

"Vivillon! Dodge it!" Vivillon carefully backed up, causing the sand to fall short of her beautiful wings.

'Force palm' Ash called using his aura.

Riolu jumped through the sand and smashed Vivillon, causing her to fall to the ground.

"Aah!" Violu cried in surprise.

Vivillon got up, but she could barely fly because she had static electricity flowing around her wings.

"Riolu, finish it up with an aura sphere!" Ash said triumphantly as Riolu launched an aura sphere at the already weakened Vivillon. With the dust cleared up, Vivillon was on the ground, swirls for eyes.

"Vivillon is unable to battle, which means that the victory goes to the challenger, Ash from Pallet Town!"

"Yea, we won!" cried Ash in excitement while pumping his fist into the air. Pikachu and Riolu both grinned at their hard earned victories. "Very well done Ash, I present you with the Bug Badge!" Viola said while giving Ash the badge.

"Yeah! I just got the Bug Badge!" Ash cried joyously. " Pikaa!" cried Pikachu "Riolu!" cried Riolu.

"I would also like to congratulate you on training your pokemon so well that they can attack on their own." Viola said.

"Oh that? I have an aura stronger than the average person's, so I can talk to my pokemon using my aura." Ash explained.

Viola, Alexa and Serena were both equally startled by this information, because they didn't know about that before.

"Well with that kind of power, you'll win the Kalos league for sure!" Viola said encouragingly.

Ash and everyone who was traveling with him said goodbye to Alexa as they left the gym.

"Where are we going now? I think there is a gym in Cyllage city." said Bonnie.

"Well, we should probably go to Lumiose city and return the other two starters to the professor." Riley suggested.

Ash noticed that Clemont and Bonnie flinched a little, but didn't think much of it.

"Yeah, sounds like a plan. We could stop and go to some restaurants there too!" Agreed Ash. "You always think about eating!" Said Serena and she gave Ash a playful smack on the head. "But I think going to Lumiose City is a good idea too!" And with that said, everyone began to head towards Lumiose City on Route 4.

After walking for several minutes, Serena decided to break the silence.

"I didn't know you were THAT special…" Serena whispered to Ash while they were walking slightly behind everyone else.

"Yeah… I'm kind of a big deal." Said Ash, while smirking.

"Yeah…. And you're all mine." Serena said dreamily as she leaned on Ash's arm, letting out a sigh of happiness.

Ash's skin tingled where Serena's face touched his arm, and he smiled.

Meanwhile, further down the trail…

"Get those Nidorino ready! We don't have all day!" commanded Eldritch, "Yes sir!" all the grunts whispered in unison. "They are all equipped with poison gems?" Eldritch asked. "Yes sir!" came the reply. "Good, now get ready, our targets might walk past us any second."

Back to Ash and his friends…

Ash was walking down the trail with Serena by his side, feeling happy that he had won the gym battle. One second, everything was fine, then, everything went wrong.

"Nidorino use poison sting!" many people suddenly shouted.

A dozen Nidorino jumped out of the foliage. "Nidooooo!" they all cried as they launched their poison gem-enhanced poison stings at our heroes.

"Watch out!" Ash cried as he jumped in front of Serena putting up a barricade with his aura. He sneaked a quick glance and saw that Riley was doing the same for Clemont and Bonnie.

"Eeek!" Serena cried in surprise.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't the great Ash Ketchum." Eldritch said while stepping out of the shadows. Ash gasped, he knew that voice from somewhere…

Eldritch smiled. "Yes, it's been a long time hasn't it? You remember me don't you? Well this time, I will get my REVENGE!" he snarled as he tossed a ball onto the ground.

"Drapion!" The pokemon cried as it was released, hungry for revenge against Ash.

"Lucario! Use bone rush!" Riley said.

"Protect," Eldritch simply said, only for Lucario to completely ignore him and take out the Nidorino, one by one.

"What do we do know sir?" came the voices as the grunts stepped out of the bushes.

"They're with Team Rocket!" Ash realized, seeing the large red R on the front of the grunts' uniforms.

"Return to base, I will be with you shortly." Eldritch said with no emotion whatsoever. After seeing the grunts flee towards Santalune city, he yelled "Use poison jab!"

"Drapi!" the drapion cried as its two pincers glowed purple. "No!" Riley cried as he lowered his barrier and launched a large aura sphere at the drapion.

The first pincer punched through Ash's aura barrier, but lost energy, resulting in a normal pincer hitting Ash in the chest, and sending him flying.

Serena was not so lucky.

The second pincer struck Serena in the stomach with full power. "AAAAH!" Serena cried in pain as the poison coursed through her body. "Serena!" Ash cried, but he was too far to do anything.

Then the aura sphere hit drapion square in the face, knocking him out.

Eldritch snarled. Drapion was one of this best pokemon, and it was knocked out by a single aura sphere?! He had expected this to be an easy mission, especially since they had numbers, but he hadn't expected Ash to have such a powerful friend.

Sighing, Eldritch withdrew Drapion and said "Is that the best you can do?" to the ball. Then he launched a ball towards the sky, revealing a Honchkrow. He did an acrobatic jump onto it, and flew away.

"Serena!" Ash cried as he ran towards her. "Serena! Hang in there!" Ash tried to feel for a pulse, and almost cried in happiness when he found her heart was still beating, albeit barely.

"We need to get her to a pokemon center right away! She might not make it otherwise!" Riley cried.

"Right away!" Agreed Clemont and Bonnie.

Ash called out his fletchling and told it to go towards Lumiose city to alert Nurse Joy. The, he carefully picked Serena up, and carried her bridal-style towards Lumiose city, with Riley, Clemont and Bonnie following in hot pursuit.

So how was it? Please review. Also, leave a guess about who Eldritch is as he will be revealed pretty soon. The reward for guessing it right is my confirmation, so if you want to know who he is ahead of time, leave a guess. One guess per person please. Also, if you paid attention to the anime, it shouldn't be very hard, because I gave several hints.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Hi everyone, I am actually busier on the weekends, and I won't post as often on the weekends. Thank you for understanding.

Lance: 38

I don't own pokemon

Ash and the others finally arrived at the pokemon center with a limp Serena in Ash's arms.

"Nurse Joy!" Ash desperately shouted. "We need some help here."

"Oh dear," Nurse Joy exclaimed when she saw the condition Serena was in. "Come, follow me, the emergency room is this way." Ash followed her down the hallway, into a small room. "Lay her here please, Wigglytuff! Please come help!" Nurse Joy shouted.

Moments later, a wigglytuff walked in and help Nurse Joy with healing Serena.

"She's severely poisoned!" Nurse Joy said, completely shocked.

"Yeah, some guy from Team Rocket used his drapion to attack her with poison jab." Said Ash with clenched fists. If he ever sees that guy again, he would personally make him pay for what he did to Serena. Ash also had a sneaking suspicion to who the shady captain was.

"Well, she needs to stay here to rest up. It'd be dangerous for her to travel again unless completely healed. You could do something in Lumiose city, there are lots of places to go!" Nurse Joy said, while still working on making sure Serena would be ok. "Wigglytuff, get some Pecha berries please!"

Nodding, Ash walked out of the room and found his way back to his friends.

"How is she?" Clemont asked with concern.

"Not good," said Ash, shaking his head. "Well, we can go do other things while she rests. Let's go stop by Professor Sycamore's lab to return the Froakie and Chespin."

"Yeah, can we stay there and look at the pokemon that he is studying?" Bonnie asked.

"Oh, alright." Clemont agreed.

Three days later…

Serena woke up in a strange room, with needles in her arms. She tried to sit up, but pain flared through her body. She couldn't move at all! All she could do was wait….

Minutes later, Nurse Joy walked into the room. "You're awake!" she happily exclaimed.

"Y-yeah, how long was I out?" Serena asked, even though she didn't want to know the answer.

"Hmm, about three days."

"Three days!" Serena knew that Ash wasn't always patient, what if they had already left for Cyllage city? "No," she chastised herself, Ash wouldn't do that! Would he? Cautiously, she asked, "How did I get here?"

"A young boy with spiky ebony hair brought you here, he said that you had been hit by a poison jab from a drapion. I thought that you were lucky to be alive. He really cares for you, the other night, he didn't sleep for a moment to watch your heart monitor, since I had to go to sleep, and it's required by law that I get at least five hours of sleep every night, so I will be awake and ready while treating patients." Nurse Joy explained.

"Wow," Serena thought, "I didn't know he cared for me THAT much. Enough to stay in one city and not do anything."

"C-can I see him?" Serena asked.

Nurse Joy smiled. "Sure, let me go get him it will only be a few minutes." She said.

A minute later, Ash came running into the room, with a big smile on his face.

"Serena! You're awake! I was so worried about you!" he said as he sat down beside Serena's bed. "Three days! Man do you know how to sleep! So, how are you feeling?"

"Better, but I will be even better in a few minutes." Serena said, hoping that Ash wasn't only pretending to be happy.

Ash held Serena's hand. "Listen," he started. "This is all my fault, I was able to learn how to put up a barricade with my aura, but it was still too weak. It got destroyed by a single attack. If I was stronger, you wouldn't be here and-"

"Stop that!" Serena was shocked. "It wasn't your fault! You saved me! It was me who didn't get out of the way in time. And I never got to thank you for bringing me all the way here."

"Yeah, well, it did take a lot of energy." Ash said while scratching the back of his head. "Please don't have any more near-death experiences."

Serena giggled. "I won't. I promise you that."

They sat there for a while, with no one willing to say anything. After a few moments, Serena decided to break the silence.

"So…. What did you do in these three days?"

"Well, I didn't get to go challenge the Cyllage gym, but I was able to return the other two starters to Professor Sycamore. Also, we did some training, and look what happened!" Ash took out a pokeball and let out Fletchinder. "Fletchling evolved into Fletchinder!"

"That's great Ash!" Serena said, happy that they at least got to do something while she was knocked out.

"That's not all he did." Ash and Serena looked up and saw Riley walk in. "He also spent hours training with his aura, and although not learning anything new, he can now make an aura sphere that is big enough to be HALF as lethal as a normal one from riolu. I don't know if you knew, but Ash knew how to make aura spheres, just not ones big enough to be of any harm."

"Yeah….." I was hoping you wouldn't say that. Said Ash sheepishly as he scratched the back of his head.

Riley walked out and said "I'll go get Clemont and Bonnie, they'll be happy to see you awake!"

After Clemont and Bonnie expressed their joy for Serena waking up, Nurse Joy walked in and said "Serena, you are ready to go, because the poison has left your body. Just remember to frequently have Pecha berry smoothies, just in case the poison comes back."

"Great, thanks!" Serena said happily, and got up out of the bed.

"Wow, Serena! I never get told by doctors to go drink smoothies! I wish I had to drink smoothies too!" Bonnie said.

"Yeah, well be glad that you weren't hit by a poison jab." Clemont said.

"Alright, why don't we all go pack our things so we can start heading towards Campfrier Town?" Riley suggested.

Everyone went to their own rooms, except for Serena, because she didn't have a room. She decided to follow Ash to his room, since that would've been the room she would've stayed in if she weren't unconscious.

Minutes later, everyone had everything packed and was ready to leave.

The five all started towards Campfrier Town. Serena was holding hands with Ash, happily walking down the path. After walking for several minutes on Route 5, Serena suddenly collapsed. Ash caught her before she hit the ground.

"Serena! Are you ok?" Ash asked with concern. "You seem very tired."

"Yeah, I just suddenly felt a little dizzy all of a sudden." Serena said, trying to shake her head free of the little ducks dancing in front of her eyes. "I'll be ok."

"You must not have fully recovered your energy." Riley said, with concern.

"Maybe we should take a little break." Clemont suggested.

The group sat dawn in a clearing. Serena leaned on Ash for support, which Ash didn't mind at all.

"So Ash, have you thought about what you wanted to catch next?" Bonnie asked.

"Actually, I have, but I'm not sure when I'll meet it. I did do some research back at the pokemon center." Ash replied.

"So what do you want to catch?" Bonnie ventured.

"It's a surprise." Ash said with a grin.

"Aww that's no fun!" Bonnie pouted, causing everyone to burst out in laughter.

"Are you feeling better?" Clemont asked Serena.

"Yeah, let's go." Serena said.

Everyone got up, except for Serena. Her legs still felt weak, but she didn't want to seem weak in front of Ash. Ash noticed, however, and said "Serena, it's ok, I'll carry you for a little bit." Then he kneeled in front of her and motioned her to get on his back.

Ash carried her as they continued down the path. He felt Serena's breath on his neck, and it gave him a pleasant feeling. He smiled at the feeling and tried to ignore the fact that he was missing great chances to catch pokemon. After all, he loved Serena more than anything else in the world, right?

After walking for thirty minutes, Riley realized that Ash was tired, but didn't want to tell Serena that he was, so he decided to save Ash and said "Alright, let's stop for lunch," earning a grateful expression from Ash.

"Thank you for carrying me that far," Said Serena gratefully.

"No problem. I'd do anything for you." Ash replied, causing Serena to blush slightly.

"Well, I'd better start making lunch." Clemont said.

"Alright then, I'm going to go do some training!" Ash said as he let out Riolu. They ran along the path to find a good place to train. Ash was so lost in thought that he ran into a blonde girl on roller skates with a Lucario.

"Hey watch where you're going!" She said. Then she noticed Ash's Riolu. "Oh! You have a riolu? Then take this, it will help you later on." She gave Ash a weird stone. "It's a Lucarioite. It'll help when riolu evolves into Lucario. My name is Korrina, and this is my Lucario. Now if you'll excuse us, we have to go train, see you later, cutie!" She winked at him before going off.

"Okay…." Ash said, while looking at the stone, then put it into his backpack. "Let's think about it later, and go train!" he said to Riolu.

"Ri-Riolu!" it barked happily.

15 minutes later, lunch was ready and Riley went looking for Ash. "Ash! Food is ready!" Riley yelled and Ash immediately ran out of the woods smiling, with Pikachu and Riolu. They then head back to where they set up lunch, and started eating.

Serena asked Ash "How did it go?"

"Great! Riolu is even stronger than before!" Then, he got up for seconds before Serena even took a bite out of her lunch.

Serena giggled. "Always the same old Ash…" she thought.

After they were finished eating, the group packed everything up and continued towards Campfrier Town, which was only a short distance away.

In a secret base, unknown location…

Eldritch paced around in his office. He was so close! But how can he kill Ash? He was thinking about what happened during their attack. Wait! That's it! Ash had been so intent on protecting that girl… Who has that girl? Why did he care for her so much? Didn't matter, if he needed to get to Ash, he would first have to get him through that girl. Eldritch smiled. He knew what he was going to do.

Then there was a soft knock on his door.

"Come in! The door isn't locked." Eldritch barked.

The door opened. "Sir, he has a call for you." The grunt standing outside the door frame reported.

Eldritch smiled. "Get me the phone." If 'he' had the time to phone him, it must be important. Then, he was given the video phone. He started the call, and saw a familiar red-haired champion on the other side of the screen. "Lance! What do you need?"

"I was wondering if you've eliminated Ash. We've been sabotaging his league tournaments, but we don't know how long we can keep it up without Ash, or the others finding out." Lance explained.

"Nah, he got away. He is under the protection of a strong aura guardian." Eldritch said with gritted teeth. "Steven still hasn't found out that you're with us?" he asked.

"Nope, that fool and Diantha still think that I am just trying to keep aura guardians from being champion, like it should be."

Eldritch smirked. "Soon, they shall suffer the consequences of ignorance." Then, his attitude suddenly became serious. "However, I do need you to do me a favor."

"What?" Lance asked with a smirk.

"I need you to move most of the police to a different region. I can't have the police interfering with my mission. My grunts almost got caught in Santalune City. If that happens, our advantage of numbers will completely disappear. I know you are very high ranked and you have the power to do that."

"Sure thing, but I want Ash eliminated." Lance said ending his call.

Eldritch still had to finish making his plans. He would need something stronger than Nidorino to finish Ash off. Then, he let out an evil cackle, for he got a great idea.

Eldritch smiled again, this was going to be easier than he thought it would be.

"Ash, oh Ash, wait 'til you see what I've got in store for you..."

So did you guys like it? Hate it? Please leave a comment if you can.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

By the way guys, I might not post everyday, but I'll try to put a new chapter up every other day at the latest, unless I'm gone for the weekend or something. I had stressed before that I am busy and I have other things to do. But enough with that, here's the next chapter!

I don't own pokemon

Ash and his friends made their way to Campfrier town by following route 5. They quickly decided that they were going to go to sleep, so they checked into the pokemon center. Ash told Serena that she could get ready for bed first, and when she was done, Ash went into the bathroom to get ready for bed himself. When he got out of the bathroom, he found Serena was in the middle of changing, averted his eyes, and started blushing. Serena, who had only a bra and panties on, said "Ash, I'll make you a deal, I'll sleep like this if you sleep without your shirt on." She giggled at how fast his shirt came off. They got into bed, and Serena laid her head on Ash's chest. "Goodnight," she whispered, and fell asleep.

Later that night…

"Alright, I want all grunts in Santalune city to make their way to Connecting Cave through Lumiose City. ON THE DOUBLE!" Eldritch roared.

"Yes sir!" cried everyone standing at attention. Then, despite it being late at night, they all started marching towards Lumiose City.

"Right now, Captain Eldritch?" Asked James.

"No, next year, you morons, NOW MOVE IT!" Eldritch replied.

Even later that night…

"Let me go find Ash." Serena said to Clemont and Bonnie before walking towards their room. She gently knocked on the door, but received no response. Deciding that Ash must not have heard the knock, she knocked again, louder. Still receiving no response, Serena opened the door- to find Ash making out with another girl with blue hair on the bed. Serena was speechless and her heart skipped a beat. She wanted to cry, but tears wouldn't fall. Then the girl turned towards her and smirked. "You'll never-"but was cut off by a louder noise yelling.

"Serena! Wake up!"

Immediately, he eyes snapped open, to find herself sleeping with Ash. She let out a sigh of relief, her eyes got watery.

"It's ok; it was only a bad dream…" Ash comforted her.

"I-it was awful…" Serena said, not knowing what she would do if that actually happened.

"Well, you don't need to think about it too much, bad dreams happen frequently. Now its 2:00 am, so why don't you try to get a little more sleep?" Ash suggested.

Happily with the new knowledge that that was only a dream, Serena fell asleep back into Ash's chest, but she couldn't help but feel that the dream she had was no ordinary nightmare...

Riley woke up feeling a disturbance in the aura somewhere around him. He hazily looked around the room to find that every was normal. Lucario was sleeping peacefully on the couch, and the clock read 7:00.

"Must be something somewhere outside," He thought.

"Something big is going to happen today, I know it." He decided. "I'd better wake everyone up now, so we can get breakfast before the 8:00 morning rush."

Everyone was ready and in the dining area by 7:30.

"Let's finish this up quickly, so we can get out of here before everyone comes down to get breakfast." Clemont suggested. "Then we can hit the road."

Everyone agreed, except for Ash. Although he wanted to go travel and win the Kalos league, he had a more important mission on his mind right now: to stuff his face with as much food as possible. Serena giggled at her boyfriend's actions. "He can be so cute sometimes," she thought.

"What was that?" Bonnie asked.

Realizing that she must've spoken her thoughts out loud, Serena's face turned bright red. "Nothing! Nothing!" She cried, attempting to cover her mistake.

"No, I'm pretty sure that you said that you think-"Bonnie started.

"Bonnie, if she doesn't want to share, then don't share for her." Clemont scolded, and Serena was relieved that Clemont came to the rescue, although he didn't know it.

"Okay fine…" Bonnie pouted.

After Ash was done eating, the group continued walking. It was just like any other route, except Ash was leading them this time, and not holding hands with Serena in the back of the group.

"Y'know," Bonnie said as she walked closer to Serena. "I heard what you said about Ash this morning at breakfast."

"Y-you did?" Serena squeaked.

"Yes, and I also know that you and Ash like each other very very much." Bonnie whispered.

"Y-you do? H-how?" Serena stammered.

"Well, it isn't that hard to tell, especially since you always walk in the back holding hands with Ash. Its ok, we all know, and you don't need to be ashamed of it. Also, when we were at your house, I saw you sleeping with Ash and…"

"You saw that?!" Serena said, clearly surprised. She had been sure that the door was closed when they slept together that night.

"Uh, yeah, your door was open, and I think your mom must've seen you sleeping with him too." Bonnie lied, although according to Riley, the second part was actually true.

"Eeeeep! She saw us?" Serena gasped. No wonder she had been reluctant to let Serena go travel with Ash. Grace had always been picky around Serena with boys, telling her that she had to find a boy that actually cared about her, or they'll just leave her once they found a cuter girl. So her mom wouldn't let her go with Ash because she thought Ash was more or less a stranger to her. Now she could understand what her mom was thinking. She had been so lost in thought that she didn't realize that Ash suddenly stopped.

"What's wrong?" Serena asked him with concern.

"Look." replied Ash.

The group looked forward, to see a large group of people in black uniforms marching in formation.

"Team Rocket," Ash whispered.

"Hurry up! We don't have all day!" A man barked.

Everyone flinched. It was the man with the drapion!

Ash however, gasped in shock, not only did he recognize that voice from the previous encounter, but he also recognized it as a voice from one of his previous adventures.

"I know exactly who that is." Ash whispered to himself with clenched fists.

Then, by coincidence, a grunt in the back row turned around and saw the group. He recognized them as the group they had ambushed with nidorinos.

"Sir!" He shouted.

Eldritch turned around and immediately spotted Ash.

"Keep marching." He ordered, and then waited for everyone to march past him, before confronting the group.

"Well hello, I realized that I haven't introduced myself yet. My name is Eldritch, a captain in Team Rocket, although Ash might know me as… someone else."

"Shut up!" Ash cried, "You'll pay for what you did to Serena! Go Pikachu!"

"Hmmm," Eldritch said as he lobbed a ball from his belt, revealing a scizor.

Riley tried to sneak around Eldritch and deal as much damage to the unsuspecting grunts, when he was stopped by Eldritch's drapion, eager for a taste of revenge. Riley snarled, and fought the drapion with his lucario, and he realized that this drapion had been training hard just so he could take more than one aura sphere.

Meanwhile, Eldritch still had his attention on Ash. "My scyther evolved not too long ago, and I don't know if you remember him, but he will be your doom." Eldritch calmly said. "Now, use bullet punch!"

Scizor shot, well, like a bullet, straight towards Pikachu, not letting anything stop him, and nailed the startled pikachu in the head.

"Pikaaa!" Pikachu cried in pain.

"Pikachu dust yourself off and use volt tackle!" Ash commanded.

Pikachu leapt towards Scizor, electricity surrounding his body. He made connection with the scizor's chest, and Scizor grunted in pain.

"Scizor quickly, now use swords dance!" Eldritch cried and scizor began to dance elegantly while raising its attack stat.

"Pikachu use electro ball!" Ash said, and Pikachu launched a ball of electric energy at scizor, although it didn't do very much damage.

"Bullet punch again! This time, aim to kill!" Eldritch said, wanting to buy as much time as possible for his grunts to escape.

"Dodge, and use Iron tail!" Ash instructed.

"You dodge that too Scizor!" Eldritch commanded with gusto.

"Scizor now use bug bite!" Eldritch then said.

Scizor attacked Pikachu ferociously, and Pikachu ended up with swirls for eyes.

"Now Scizor aim for Ash, mega evolve, and use-"Eldritch was interrupted when sirens suddenly started flaring.

"Ugh, I told him to take out all of the police!" Eldritch grunted. "Doesn't matter, I got the time I needed." And with that, he called out his Honchkrow, recalled his scizor and drapion, and flew towards his marching grunts.

"Eldritch… why had he ordered the scizor to aim for me? I really hope that you are not who I think you are…" Ash muttered, as Officer Jenny arrived and ask the group is they were OK.

"We are!" Bonnie answered. "Ash saved us! But we are lucky that you came, because it looked like Ash was going to lose."

"We have been tracking the movements of Team Rocket for about twelve and a half hours now, they started marching from Santalune city, but we were never able to stop them because of this shady 'Eldritch' character. Have any idea who he is?" Officer Jenny asked.

"Not really… but Ash, could that have been Tracey? You told us that he had a scyther…" Serena said, remembering to when Ash told her about his adventures at her house.

"No… Tracey was still at Professor Oak's lab when I came to Kalos, so even if he joined Team Rocket, he wouldn't become a captain that quickly, and he wouldn't take revenge on me because I haven't done anything to him. Although I have a sneaking suspicion I know exactly who that is."

"And who might that be?" Asked Riley, clearly impressed with how Eldritch is as a trainer.

Ash raised his hands in a defensive gesture." I don't have any proof, but I will go make a video call when we reach the Campfrier pokemon center, and then it'll be clear." He replied. "For now, we need to get Pikachu to a pokemon center."

With that said, everyone immediately began to run towards Campfrier town.

Moments later, the group arrived in the pokemon center. While Nurse Joy attended to Pikachu, Ash made his way to a video phone. He remembered that his friend said she was staying with Candice at Snowpoint City, and dialed Candice's number.

It took many rings since Sinnoh was far away, but eventually someone picked up.

Candice beamed when she saw Ash on the phone.

"Ash! Long time no see! I assume this is a call for Dawn?"

"Yep."

"Dawn! Ash is calling you!"

A minute later, Ash saw Dawn walk into the room, and he frowned when he realized that her eyes were red from crying.

"Dawn, are you OK?" Ash asked with concern.

"Y-yeah Ash, nice to see you, why did you call me?" she asked, sniffling while talking.

"How is Paul?" Ash deliberately asked.

This caused Dawn to start crying again.

"H-he's g-gone! H-he *sob* abandoned me! I don't know why! He *sniff* said he would get revenge when he kept losing to the pyramid king, a-and then he left without saying g-goodbye!" Dawn managed to get out, despite crying at the same time. "I-I *sniff* stayed here with him, and I hadn't registered at the beginning of the tournament season, s-so, I can't even compete until next season!"

Ash hated seeing his old friend like this. "Dawn, why don't you come travel with me again?" Dawn froze when Ash asked that. "R-really?"

"Yes. I am currently in Campfrier town in the Kalos region, but by the time you get here from Sinnoh, I'll probably be in Cyllage City. We'll meet you there."

Dawn mentally wrote down Cyllage city, and smiled, her first real smile for a couple of days. "Great! I'll go pack my things and go tell Candice!" Dawn said just as Ash was tapped on the shoulder by Serena, who had been watching the call from far away, and began to get slightly jealous.

"Hey Serena, what's up?" Ash asked. "Who's she?" thought Dawn. "Here Ash, Pikachu is healed up," Said Serena as she handed Pikachu to Ash. "Thanks Serena, this is my old friend Dawn! Dawn, this is my friend Serena."

"Pleased to meet you," Said Dawn, hoping that Serena wasn't Ash's girlfriend. She made another mental note to ask him about that later too. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go pack." Dawn said and ran downstairs to tell Candice the good news.

Ash ended the call and asked Serena, "Hey, didn't you say you needed to call your mom?"

"Ah! I completely forgot about that! Erm, could you teach me how to use the video phone?" She added sheepishly.

"Sure!" replied Ash.

The call went pretty well, and Serena found out that her mom was very surprised that she was hospitalized for a couple days, but they convinced her that Ash had tried his best to save her. On that note, Grace said that she was Ok, and even encouraging that Serena be together with Ash, after finding out how much they cared for each other. They ended the call, and Serena decided that it went really well; it was actually a lot better than then went back to his friends with Serena. He told them that he now believed strongly that Eldritch was Paul, although he still had no true evidence. With nothing else to do, everyone decided to go to bed, so they can go to Cyllage City early tomorrow.

When Ash and Serena got into their room, Serena said "Ash, I love you so much…" and began to kiss him excessively.

"What's wrong?" Ash asked.

"W-what?" Serena asked, knowing that Ash saw right through her.

"You have your 'I have something to talk to you about' act going on right now." Ash explained.

"Oh well, yes, I was wondering if, um…. If you liked Dawn?" Serena asked, blushing while looking away from Ash.

Ash smirked, "So this is what she's worried about." He thought. Then he said to Serena "You mean, like a friend?" even though he knew exactly what Serena meant.

"N-no, I mean, more than a friend." Serena quickly replied.

Ash smiled and pulled Serena into a hug. "Serena, you don't have to be jealous, I like Dawn, but more like a friend, or maybe a little sister, but the only person I love in this world is you."

Serena blushed at Ash's warm words, and stayed in his embrace, until he pulled away.

"Alright, now that that's behind us, why don't we get ready for bed?" he suggested.

"Ok," Serena said.

Pretty soon, they were both in bed, happily thinking about what they were going to do tomorrow, while enjoying each other's presence.

"I love you…" Serena whispered before drifting off to a deep sleep.

So did you guys like it? Please tell me. Also, if you guys think that Eldritch is Paul, you might be correct, but if you go on thinking like that, you may or may not be surprised. That's all I'm saying.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Dawn: 16

I don't own pokemon

Serena awoke to find that she was in an empty bed. She immediately panicked. "Where is Ash?" Serena thought. "Did he leave me here? Why did he leave without waking me up?" looking around, she found that Ash's stuff was gone, including his clothes, backpack and hat. Then she saw the note on the desk. She got out of bed, and cautiously picked up the piece of paper, dreading what it might say.

'Hey Serena, when I woke up, you were still sleeping. By the time you read this I will be gone. I know that you love me, but I don't actually love you. I'm leaving with Clemont and Bonnie, and we're leaving this place without you. I realized since the call yesterday that I care for Dawn more than you, so I will go find her in Cyllage City. –Ash'

Serena almost fainted. She couldn't believe that Ash would do such a thing. She sat down on the floor, and began to cry. Her nightmare was becoming true! The girl in that dream had to be Dawn! After a minute or two, she wiped her tears away and reached for the note, just to make sure she didn't read it wrong. She picked up the note, and read it again, but she did read it correctly the first time. However, she found an arrow near the bottom pointing to the bottom right corner this time. She flipped the paper over and found more words.

'Just kidding. I woke up and felt hungry, but you looked so peaceful sleeping that I did not want to wake you up. I'm eating breakfast right now and won't leave until you wake up. I would have loved to see your expression when you read this note though. –Ash'

Serena let out a sigh of relief, but also became very mad. She was going to have a very serious discussion with Ash when she went to the cafeteria. She dried her face with her sleeve and went to get ready for the day.

When Serena went downstairs, she found Ash talking and laughing with Clemont and Bonnie while eating. She walked over and promptly gave Ash a slap across the cheek.

"How dare you do that to me!" Serena flared. "Don't you know how bad that made me feel? I almost didn't find the words on the backside!"

Clemont and Bonnie looked at them in confusion, wondering what in the world just happened.

"Sorry, I don't know what came over me," Ash calmly replied while gingerly rubbing his hurt cheek and giving Serena an innocent look. "I didn't know you would take it THAT seriously. It won't happen again. Now in the meantime, why don't you get food to eat? Riley went to ask for some directions, just to make sure we are headed in the right direction, and we can leave right when you finish eating!"

Serena sighed. How could she have been that mad at Ash? As she made her way towards the food, the sweet aroma lifted her spirits. She decided to forgive Ash for his little prank as she made her way back to the table with a large plate of food.

Once Serena finished eating, the group made their way towards Cyllage town. It was mostly uneventful, except for when Ash tried to catch a wild Flabebe. In the end, he lost it among the flowers. A single person stood at the entrance of Cyllage City, and when the person noticed the group, she ran towards them.

"Ash!" Dawn cried as she reached them.

"Piplup!" the little penguin pokemon said, obviously happy to see pikachu again.

"Hey Dawn!" Ash replied. "How did you get here so fast?"

Dawn was visibly upset to see Serena standing so close to Ash, but when she realized that Ash spoke to her, she immediately responded "Candice was able to find me a plane that left that night, and she got the ticket for free, since she was a gym leader. I arrived here maybe half an hour ago."

"Oh that's great! I was just about to go challenge the Cyllage gym! You should come with us." Ash suggested.

"I'd love to!" Dawn replied. Then she addressed the rest of the group. "Hi, my name is Dawn, I was with Ash on his journeys through Sinnoh, and this is my partner piplup." She said.

"Pip-lup!" piplup said while sticking out his chest, wanting to make a good first impression.

"Wow!" Bonnie cried as she was dragged away by Clemont to follow Ash, who was going towards the gym.

When they walked into the gym, they found that there was a bunch of climbing walls. Ash went over to a staff member.

"Excuse me, I am here for a gym battle, do you know if the gym leader is accepting challenges now?" Ash asked politely.

"Yes, Grant is the leader, and he likes rock types. You will have to climb these walls in order to reach him though." The staff member replied.

Ash went back to the group. "I'm going to climb the walls to get to the leader!" he exclaimed.

"Isn't that a little dangerous?" questioned Dawn.

"Yeah, it would be horrible if you fell and hurt yourself." Serena said with an equal amount of concern as Dawn.

"No need to worry!" Ash said while giving Dawn a thumbs up, causing her to giggle.

Serena knew that they were close friends, but couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy. "Well, you still be careful." Serena told Ash.

Ash started to climb, while everyone else, except for Riley who found a bench to sit at, gazed up at him. "I want to climb too!" Bonnie cried as she tried to follow after Ash. "No it's too dangerous!" Clemont cried as he grabbed a flailing Bonnie.

"Are they always like that?" Dawn asked Serena while giggling.

"Pretty much," Serena summed up.

Meanwhile, Ash was finding it relatively easy to scale the wall. He even had time to think of his strategy some more. "The gym leader used Rock types, and Froakie hasn't had a chance to fight in a gym battle yet, so I will use Froakie for sure!" he thought, "But, if he is a rock type trainer, Fletchinder will have a hard time, even though I haven't used her yet. So will I use Riolu who has an advantage, or will…" His thought was interrupted as one of the rocky pegs his foot was on gave away. "Waah!" he cried and almost fell.

"Ash watch out!" Serena and Dawn cried in unison, and both turned to stare at each other, before turning away. "I hope she's not trying to steal Ash from me…" both of them thought.

After several minutes of climbing, a sweat-drenched Ash finally reached the battlefield at the top of the walls. A man with brown hair and skin greeted him at the top.

"Hello, my name is Grant, a rock type specialist, but before we battle, I imagine that your friends would like to come watch." He waved his hand and the staff at the bottom of the gym led everyone else towards the secret staircase.

"Why couldn't I take those stairs?" Ash thought glumly. "Must be Arceus punishing me for that prank on Serena this morning."

Once everyone was settled in, Grant stepped to one side of the battle field, and Ash the other.

"Alright, I, Grant the leader of the Cyllage gym accept your challenge!"

"This will be a two on two battle. The battle is over when both pokemon on one side are unable to battle. Only the challenger is allowed to make substitutions." The ref recited.

"Alright Froakie! Let's go!" Ash cried ash he threw his pokeball." "Froakie!" the little frog cried as it appeared out of its ball.

"Wow! I've never seen that pokemon before!" said Dawn as she tried to learn about it on her pokedex, but to no avail.

"That is a froakie, the water type starter for Kalos." Said Serena matter-of-factly, happy that she knew things that Dawn didn't.

"It's our turn! Go Amaura!" Grant cried, releasing a blue dinosaur-like pokemon.

"Huh, an amaura." Ash said while taking out his pokedex.

"Alright! Froakie use water pulse." Froakie launched a large ball of water at the amaura, causing it to flinch in pain.

"Amaura, aurora beam!" Grant yelled and Amaura returned fire with a rainbow colored beam. Froakie got up, to find that he was moving more sluggishly.

"Huh, what just happened?" questioned Serena.

It was Dawn's turn to show off. "Aurora beam may reduce the target's speed if it makes contact." She proudly explained.

"Oh…" Serena thought, "She actually is pretty smart."

"Froakie use water gun!" Ash cried, but before he could, Grant yelled "Amaura, rock tomb!" and Amaura launched giant rocks at Froakie.

Both attacks hit their intended targets, but when the dust cleared up, Froakie was down, but Amaura was still standing, albeit barely.

"The winner is Amaura!" the referee chanted.

"Good job Froakie…" Ash said. "Grant is pretty tough, I think I kind of need Riolu…" he thought. Then he launched a ball skyward. "Riolu, I need your help!"

Riolu came out ready to fight.

"Amaura, ice beam!" Grant shouted.

"Aura sphere!" Ash commanded, not wanting to lose.

The attacks clashed together, but because aura sphere was the stronger of the two, it shot through ice beam and nailed the already weakened amaura in the chest.

"Amaur…" she cried as her eyes became swirls.

"Amaura is unable to battle, the winner is riolu!" the ref called.

"Yes! Go Ash!" Serena and Dawn cried together, and then gave each other a sour look. They were both pretty sure that the other has at least a crush on Ash by now.

"You don't need to compete like that." Riley said calmly. "I'm sure Ash likes you both."

This caused both girls to blush and calm down.

"Alright, go Tyrunt!" Grant called out, and a brown dinosaur pokemon materialized in front of him.

"Ty-ty!" it cried.

"Wow a tyrunt!" Ash said with awe, and checked his pokedex.

"It's still a rock type, so you still have the advantage!" Ash told Riolu with a thumbs up. "Now get ready communicate with your aura and surprise him." Ash whispered.

"Tyrunt, use bite!" Grant commanded, and when he saw that Ash didn't give a command, he smirked. "This would be an easy win…" his thoughts were interrupted when Riolu jumped up and smashed Tyrunt with a force palm.

"How?" thought Grant, and said "Fire fang!"

Tyrunt's mouth turned hot at it tried to bit Riolu.

"That tyrunt can learn fire fang?" Ash thought, then getting control of himself. 'Dodge then use aura sphere!'

'Sure' Riolu said back, and followed instructions and knocking out the Tyrunt.

Grant opened his mouth in shock. How could this riolu attack without instructions? He wondered. Ash, upon seeing his expression, explained to him why, and Grant took out the badge. "Ash, I present you with the Cliff badge, as proof that you beat the Cyllage gym." He said.

Ash picked up the badge and struck a victory pose. "Yes! I just got a Cliff badge!" He exclaimed. "Froa! Pika! Ri!" his pokemon cried in happiness.

This caused Serena and Dawn to giggle. "Same old Ash…" Dawn muttered.

When they got to the first floor of the gym, Serena ran over to Ash and gave him a hug. "You were great!" she said, while Dawn gave a longing glance towards Ash, finally realizing that Ash was with Serena.

"What should we do next?" Clemont wondered, but was answered immediately by Riley. "It's getting kind of late, so why don't we go to the pokemon center and call it a day? Tomorrow we can go back to Campfrier town and go see Parfum Palace!"

"Sure!" Ash said, although he didn't want to have to retrace his steps, he wanted everyone else to have some fun too.

As they walked towards the pokemon center, Ash noticed that Dawn didn't seem very happy. He tried to put it aside, but wasn't sure how to.

When everyone got their rooms, Ash whispered to Serena, "You go to the room first, I'll meet up with you later."

Serena gave Ash a glance when she saw that he went to follow Dawn, but knew that she shouldn't be jealous. Ash had already shown her how much he cared for her, and she wasn't worried too much…

Dawn didn't realize that Ash had been following her until she got to her room.

"A-ash! What are you doing here?" she asked.

"OK, tell me, what's upsetting you?" Ash asked.

Dawn let out a sigh. She knew she had to tell him her feelings. "W-well Ash, I kind of sort of…. have a crush on you…." She said with her head down.

Ash nodded in understanding. So this is what all this is about.

"Dawn, I'll admit, I really liked you during our travels in Sinnoh, but I thought that you were more into Paul, so I kept my distance…" Ash explained. "Now I'm in a relationship with Serena, and although I still like you, you're more like a sister to me."

Dawn nodded, knowing that this was the most likely response. She mentally slapped herself repeatedly for ever thinking that Paul was better than Ash. Paul didn't even treat her very well. She wished she could catch Dialga to turn back time and tell Ash her feelings sooner.

"I hope it doesn't make you feel too bad…" Ash said as he tried to comfort her by rubbing her shoulder.

"No, it's ok," Dawn said, her eyes watery. "I just wish that I confessed to you sooner, and Serena is very lucky to have a compassionate, caring boyfriend like you."

Ash smiled and said "No matter what Dawn, I still love you like a sister, and I want you to continue travelling with me."

Dawn forced a smile and said "Thanks Ash, I will." Then she was very surprised when Ash pulled her into a hug. She hugged him back, resting her head on Ash's shoulder, and they stayed like that for almost a minute before Ash pulled away.

"K, you should get some sleep, we still are going to visit Parfum Palace tomorrow." Ash said.

"Ok," Dawn replied as she walked into her room followed by Piplup, who was hurt to see his trainer so sad. "Piiiiplup…" he said, trying to comfort Dawn.

"No, it's ok Piplup…" Dawn said before getting into bed, and crying herself to sleep.

Ash went back to his room, and Serena immediately asked "So what did you do?"

"I told Dawn that I'm with you, and that I only love her as a sister." Ash explained.

Serena felt her heart beat faster in excitement, but knew that the older girl was probably crushed, and immediately felt guilty that she had been so selfish. She had started to respect Dawn a little bit, and although she was happy that she didn't have to worry about her stealing Ash anymore, she still didn't want Dawn to be depressed.

Ash, who saw that facial expression change on Serena, immediately said "It's ok, she'll still travel with us."

"Sure, I'll talk to her tomorrow to make sure… everything is 'cool' between us." Serena said.

"Alright, just promise not to make her feel bad." Ash said.

Serena giggled. "I won't." as they got into bed.

They immediately fell asleep in each other's arms.

They next day, after eating an energizing breakfast, the group of now six travelers made their way back towards Campfrier Town.

While they were walking, Serena pulled Dawn aside and said "Dawn, I don't want to make you unhappy, but I hope you understand that… I love Ash, and he loves me, so I would appreciate it if… you know…. don't try to steal him from me."

Dawn looked as if she was about to cry as old wounds were reopened, but she held the tears back. "I know, it's just, I really liked him, I don't know why I didn't confess to him sooner. If I did, he would be with me and not…." She stopped, not wanting Serena to be mad at her.

"It's ok, I understand. Who wouldn't want Ash?" Serena said, trying to comfort her.

Dawn suddenly looked at Serena with a serious determined look. "Serena, promise me that you'll stay with him and keep him happy. If you break his heart, I'll…" she trailed off, again, not wanting to become enemies with the honey-blonde.

Serena nodded. It was the least she could do.

"I will." She said, and gave Dawn a friendly hug, which she returned.

"I'm so glad I got that out of the way." Dawn said, becoming cheerful once again.

"Yeah… me too…" Serena replied.

Riley smiled, for he was near the back of the group and heard the entire conversation. He was glad that they were becoming friends, despite having reasons to hate one another.

After walking for most of the morning, the group decided to settle down and have lunch in a clearing.

Clemont got to work cooking right away, but one of his cooking machines that he invented blew up, ruining all the food. Ash laughed for quite a while, until he realized that they had no food to eat.

"It's ok," Serena said to Ash, "I'll cook lunch."

"Yeah, I'll help you." Dawn said.

"Hey thanks!" Ash said wholeheartedly and he went back to talk with the others and their pokemon.

When the food was ready, they all ate quickly to maximize their time at the palace.

"Hey this is really great!" Ash said.

"Yeah, you guys should cook all the time, it's wayyyy better than Clemont's." Bonnie added.

Dawn and Serena both blushed at these compliments, and agreed to cook again if the group wanted them too. Then they continued towards Route 6 and Parfum Palace.

Meanwhile on Route 6…

Honedge was feeling sad. He was always weaker than all of the other wild pokemon, and as a result, he would often get bullied. He hadn't even had a good meal in many days. None of the other pokemon would even let him within a 10 ft. radius of their bodies, so he hadn't even had a _taste_ of aura either. He stood near the pathway where humans often walked and watched. Suddenly, he felt someone or something with an extraordinarily strong aura walk closer to him. He traced this presence to a young-looking boy travelling with a group of friends. He didn't know how strong that aura really is, but he knew if he had a taste of it, he would be strong enough to beat any pokemon in the fields. He watched the group walk to Parfum Palace, and hungrily waited for a chance to strike. He would get to that power, and he didn't mind killing the boy to do so…

Dun dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnnn….. what is going to happen next?

Please tell me how I did!


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Okay, so this chapter isn't as long as it could be, but I wanted to be able to post a chapter today so that I can work to put up another one tommorow. I really hope that this next chapter will be longer and have more content, but this chapter is also kinda important to the plot. So enjoy, knowing that I will probably get a chapter up tomorrow too.

I don't own pokemon

"Wow that was so much fun!" Dawn cried as the group exited Parfum Palace.

"I agree. Those mazes and artifacts really are amazing." Clemont added.

"Yeah, and we got to see so many beautiful furfrous too!" Serena exclaimed.

They had just visited Parfum Palace, which is just outside of Campfrier Town and they couldn't stop talking about how amazing it was. Ash in particular was glad because everyone else had so much fun, and he wasn't the center of attention for once. True, he liked to win battles with Serena watching, but it's no fun travelling unless your companions have fun and enjoy the adventure too.

His thoughts were interrupted when a pokemon that looked like a sword jumped out of the shrubbery and slashed at him.

Riley, who had lightning reflexes, called out "Metal claw!" and his Lucario intercepted with glowing white claws and stopped the attack of the pokemon just inches from Ash's face.

Honedge was not used to humans, and didn't know that they actually cared for each other, unlike the other wild pokemon. He immediately decided that he needed to take out the entire group, and looked frantically for an opening. Seeing as the Lucario blocked him from the right side, he swung his sword body horizontally from the left side, aiming at Bonnie, Serena and Dawn.

Ash knew that if he didn't do something they would get severely injured, so he jumped at them, knocking Bonnie and Dawn out of the way. He screamed in pain as the sword pokemon made connection with his back, and immediately felt his muscles being torn. The last thing he saw was Serena's face. The most beautiful, gentle and loving girl he knew in the entire world. He decided that he didn't want to die just yet, and fell unconscious.

From Honedge's perspective:

Honedge kept going and made a long gash from Ash's left shoulder to his right waist. Ash cried out in pain as he hit the ground, and Honedge stopped. Honedge had only slashed at this boy, and he could already feel the power of the new aura he had absorbed. He didn't know of anyone that had such a strong aura, and slipped back into the bushes to watch and follow the group. He knew that this boy was not just a regular trainer, and wanted to find out if he is a really good trainer.

Meanwhile, Serena was panicking. They were attacked by a wild pokemon, and Ash saves her and the other girls by diving in the way of a sword-like pokemon. "Ash!" she cried when she saw how much blood he was losing.

"We've got to get him to the nearest pokemon center, or he might die of blood loss." Riley said.

"O-oh, Mamoswine, I need your help!" Dawn said as she took out a pokeball.

A large brown pokemon materialized in front of them, and if it weren't for these circumstances, Serena would've stopped and observed this new pokemon. She could tell Clemont and Bonnie felt the same way.

"Ok, let's get him onto the Mamoswine." Clemont said as he began to lift Ash with Riley.

Once they had him on properly, they ran (or in mamoswine's case, walked) as fast as they could to the Campfrier pokemon center.

Nurse Joy was clearly surprised when she saw the lumbering pokemon arrive with a bloody body onboard. She silently convinced herself that his boy HAD to be dead. Her machines told her otherwise when she found out that the boy's heart was still beating even after the tremendous amount of blood loss. She walked to the group that had brought him here.

"How did he get that wound?" she asked.

"We were attacked by a wild honedge when we came back from Parfum Palace," Explained the man in the blue cloak and hat, who seemed to be the oldest in the group.

"Well, you were lucky to come here so early, because he probably would not have made it if the blood was allowed to flow for two more minutes." She explained. "We regret to inform you, that a shady group named Team Rocket recently came through here, and we are filled up with pokemon and trainers, who were… harassed by them. The best we can do is stop the bleeding, and you'll have to take him to either the Lumiose center, or the Cyllage center."

"Ok, then, let's go when Ash stops bleeding. It would be better to go to Cyllage city, because Ash's next gym battle will be in Shalour City." Riley said. Everyone seemed to agree, and they set off when Nurse Joy successfully stopped Ash's bleeding.

Luckily, they didn't run into many problems on the way to Cyllage city. Mamoswine was clearly tired, but he didn't want to fail Dawn.

When the group finally arrived in the Cyllage city pokemon center, extremely exhausted after a few hours of traveling, they gave Ash into the care of Nurse Joy, and all went off to bed. All except for one.

Serena stayed up, and watched Nurse Joy work on Ash's back. Ash had stayed up to watch over her, and she was going to return the favor. Nurse Joy took off Ash's bloody shirt, and Serena almost fainted at the ugly-looking gash going across his back. "Poor Ash…" She thought, and was glad that he was unconscious, and didn't feel any pain when Nurse Joy worked on healing him. She couldn't help but stare at Ash's back, admiring how strong and handsome he looked.

She stayed awake for as long as she could, before finally falling asleep on the desk she'd been sitting at.

Serena woke up, to see Ash staring at her, on a hospital bed, facing downwards. Then she remembered the wound on his back from the honedge, and asked "Do you feel better?"

Ash chuckled. "Not as good as I can be, but at least I didn't stay unconscious for three days."

Serena blushed, "Ash, I really want to thank you for saving me… again back there. I know Dawn and Bonnie felt the same way. Nurse Joy said that if we didn't get healed quickly, you might… die…" Serena said and began to tear up.

"Hey, don't feel bad, I don't know how I would've handled the situation if you got injured again. I really don't like seeing you getting hurt." Ash explained.

Serena blushed, just as Nurse Joy walked into the room.

"Ah good, you're awake. Now you have an important decision to make."

"What? Decision?" Ash asked.

"Yes, your wound will take a few weeks, maybe a month to heal. However, we have a type of scientific medicine that will make the wound heal much faster. The catch is, not only will it hurt a lot when it is used on your wound, but it will also leave a nasty looking scar on your back."

"Option two," Ash blurted without much thought. Serena had saw his eyes grow wide from shock when he had heard that it would take a month to heal.

"Ash, are you sure?" Serena asked, with concern.

"I'm not going to wake here for a month when I can be out there, getting more badges." Ash said, with determination in his eyes.

Serena sighed. She admired her boyfriend's determination, but also didn't want him to suffer. "Alright, I'll be… eating breakfast." She finally said when Nurse Joy returned with a few scientific-looking bottles. Mentally, she noted to strangle every honedge that she ever stumbles upon to take revenge for one of them hurting Ash.

Serena walked out of the room and made her way to the lobby, trying to ignore the screams of pain from the room that she was just in.

How was it? Please tell me. Also, leave a comment saying if you think that Ash will get this honedge or not. :D


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

I don't know if I can get another chapter up during the weekend, but I'll certainly try! In the meantime, enjoy this chapter!

I don't own pokemon

Serena went to her room, it had been three days since Nurse Joy used the experimental medication on Ash's back, and Nurse Joy had decided that he would be fit enough to travel tomorrow. Serena was relieved that Ash had made a swift recovery, and missed lying in bed with him. After tossing on turning for several minutes, Serena finally fell asleep.

The next day, everyone ate breakfast, except this time, Ash was able to eat with them.

"Ash, can I see your scar?" Bonnie asked. Ash turned around and showed her the scar, and Serena could tell by Bonnie's expression, that the gash was extremely big.

"I'll be fine." Ash said to Serena when he noticed her worried expression. "Let's head towards Geosenge Town next."

They had barely walked out of the pokemon center when the wild honedge came up to Ash. Pikachu grew defensive, and didn't want it to hurt Ash again.

"Wait Pikachu," commanded Ash. This honedge was trying to communicate with him using his aura! He listened to the honedge explain his story, and it told Ash that it was sorry for slashing him. Ash felt touched by its story, and said "Hey, it's ok, no one will bully you if you come with us!" Everyone else was confused, because they hadn't heard the conversation, and gaped in shock as Ash captured this honedge with little resistance. Ash explained to the group that this honedge was bullied by other wild pokemon, and only wanted some more power, so it attacked Ash. Everyone decided that if Ash forgave the honedge, then they would have no reason to hold a grudge against it. Serena sighed, maybe she wouldn't strangle every honedge that she meets.

Ash let the honedge out to admire it some more, then said "Hey Riley, are all honedge red?"

"I'm not actually sure, I think that that's definitely not normal though." He replied.

Ash dug out his pokedex and scanned his new pokemon. The picture on the screen was nowhere near what his looked like.

"Huh, it may be just like Noctowl, and is a rare shiny pokemon." Ash decided.

"That would seem to be the case." Clemont added.

"Wow! I've never even seen an oddly colored pokemon before!" Serena exclaimed.

Honedge was happy that this group had accepted him, and felt content as Ash returned him to his pokball.

(Author's note: I had to add this section in because I think that shiny honedge and doublade look AMAZING. If you haven't seen them yet, stop reading, open up a new tab and look up on google images what shiny honedge and doublade look like.)

Everyone walked along the path, enjoying the scenery. Ash was challenged by two trainers, and Serena was proud that he beat both of them. After walking a satisfying distance, the group settled down and got ready for lunch.

Ash decided to go do some training, since Serena and Dawn were still cooking, so he battled some of the wild pokemon. After battling for a while, Ash stumbled across a clearing. He found a single leaf with many berries on it, and rewarded them to his hard working companions. He was just about to go back to have lunch, when an eevee carrying a sitrus berry came out of the foliage. She dropped the berry in her mouth and started wailing when she saw that all of the hard-earned berries it had collected had been taken. What would she have for lunch now?

Ash immediately felt bad. He walked over to the eevee and sat down next to it.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know they were yours. If you want to, I can take you back to our campsite to have lunch with us, since I took yours."

Eevee immediately stopped crying, and nodded her head. "Ee! Eevee!"

Ash smiled and picked her up, while walking to the campsite, followed by Pikachu.

When Ash arrived, Serena immediately saw the eevee in his arms and squealed. "It is so cute!"

"Yeah, and I accidentally took her lunch while we were training." Ash sheepishly explained.

"That's ok, we have plenty of food." Dawn said.

They got an extra bowl for the eevee and she chirped happily and began to eat. She had never tasted food so good, it brought hearts to her eyes.

"Awww, can we keep her please?" Serena begged Ash.

"Sure Serena, all you have to do is catch it, then it will be yours." Ash suggested.

"But… I don't have any pokeballs…" Serena said.

"That's ok, you can have one of mine." Dawn said. "I have a full party anyway, and anything I catch will be sent to my PC in Sinnoh."

"Wow thanks!" Serena exclaimed. She gently lobbed the ball towards the eevee, and the ball pinged right away, signifying no resistance in the capture.

"Yes! I caught an eevee!" Serena exclaimed as she let her new friend out to continue eating.

"Great, what will you evolve her into?" Clemont asked.

"Huh?" Serena questioned.

"Eevee can evolve into many different pokemon," Riley explained. "It depends on what the trainer wants, and if the right conditions are met."

"Oh… I'll think about it, but for now, I think eevee is great just the way it is." Serena said.

Ash, meanwhile, had a question. "How does honedge eat?" he asked when he saw that honedge couldn't eat his bowl of food.

"Ah, honedge feed off of its trainer's aura, so most people who have them either don't feed them, or barely feed them. Most of the time it's fine, because they don't have to eat much anyway. It's more of a luxury thing for them. That's why your honedge attacked you, it wanted some of your auric energy. But since you have such a strong aura, it is perfectly fine to feed it once in a while." Riley explained.

"Oh alright, honedge, you can feed off of my aura!" Ash declared.

Honedge was completely taken back. His new trainer was just letting him absorb his aura? He decided that he really liked this trainer, as he happily drained a safe portion Ash's aura. He didn't want to kill his new trainer.

After everyone finished eating, they packed everything up and continued towards Geosenge town, Ash and Serena both happy that they got an additional member in their team.

When the group arrived at Geosenge town, it was still pretty early in the afternoon. Clemont looked at a map and decided that there was nothing exciting in this town, and everyone decided to continue walking.

An hour later…

Ash felt content with this route so far. He had beaten every trainer that challenged him, and he was almost in Shalour City! But right now, he had to focus on beating this trainer with the mienfoo.

"Froakie use water pulse!" Ash called.

"Dodge and use Hi Jump Kick!" his opponent called back.

Ash smirked, "Froakie, get out of the way!" Froakie immediately reacted, and moved out of the way, causing mienfoo to crash into a rock behind him. When the dust cleared, mienfoo was barely standing.

"Now finish it with a water pulse!" Ash commanded.

"Dodge it!" the battle girl frantically cried, but mienfoo was in no shape to jump out of the way, and water pulse connected with it.

"Mienn!" it cried out in pain, and it's eyes became swirls.

"Aww, I lost." The battle girl pouted as she returned mienfoo.

"Yea! Go Ash!" Serena exclaimed enthusiastically.

"Froakie!" the bubble frog pokemon happily cried as his body began to glow white.

Everyone on the sidelines gasped.

"Froakie's evolving!" Dawn exclaimed.

When the light faded, a slightly bigger blue frog pokemon stood in Froakie's place.

"Frogadier!" It cried.

"Awesome! Froakie, you evolved into Frogadier!" Ash cried as he checked Frogadier on his pokedex.

After all the excitement had gone down, Ash returned his newly evolved frogadier and everyone set off towards Shalour City again.

By sunset, the group had reached reached Reflection Cave.

"I have an idea," Bonnie said. "How 'bout we NOT go into that dark scary cave at night?"

"Sure," Riley said "Let's set up camp here."

Dawn and Serena started working on dinner, while Ash, Clemont and Riley set up the tents. Bonnie played with all of the older trainer's pokemon while they worked.

After eating a warm supper, the group enjoyed a nice campfire and told stories and made s'mores.

"See, this is why going on an adventure was a good idea." Bonnie said smugly while waving a perfectly cooked, golden-brown marshmallow at Clemont.

"I didn't say it was a bad idea." Replied Clemont as he frantically blew on his marshmallow, which had caught on fire. Every time he blew it out, the fire start up again, and Clemont decided that he needed to put out the fire in a different way. He dropped his stick on the ground, and began to furiously stomp the marshmallow. He managed to put out the fire, but the marshmallow was then stuck on his shoes. Clemont screamed in frustration as he tried to wipe it off. Meanwhile, Serena, Dawn and Ash laughed at Clemont's seemingly silly actions, and even Riley smiled one of his rare smiles. Pikachu, who had been busy snacking on a s'more that Ash had made for him, didn't realize what had happened and scratched his head in confusion.

After they finished, everyone went to their respective tents. Riley shared a tent with Clemont, Dawn with Bonnie, and of course, Ash with Serena.

Dawn went outside to brush her teeth, and when she came back in, Bonnie was in here Tyrantrum pajamas.

Dawn giggled.

"Hey stop laughing, I wear these because they are comfortable, and keep me warm at night." Bonnie exclaimed. Dawn began to laugh harder, and seeing no other option, Bonnie sighed and said "Hey, I don't make fun of you liking Ash, but you make fun of me and my pj's?"

This effectively shut Dawn up. "W-what are you talking about?" She stammered.

"I'm talking about… when you look at Ash with that longing glance of yours. You were doing that during the entire time Ash was holding hands with Serena." Bonnie said, and awaited Dawn's reaction.

"Y-you, noticed that?" Dawn asked, not believing what she heard.

"Of course, I notice all of these things." Bonnie said. "Now I hope I can get a good nights sleep, so if you continue making fun of my pajamas, I'll tell the rest of the group tomorrow."

And with that, Bonnie got into her sleeping bag. "'Night Dawn," she yawned.

"G-g'night," Dawn said, and with nothing else that she could do, she climbed into her own sleeping bag and fell asleep, dreaming about if Ash loved her instead of Serena, and traveling through new regions together.

Meanwhile, in Ash's tent,

Ash was starting to fall asleep when he heard the chattering of teeth. He looked to his left and saw Serena shivering in her sleeping bag.

"Are you ok, Serena?" he asked with concern.

"A-ash, I'm cold…" Serena said, while curling up into a fetal position in an attempt to get warmer. Suddenly, she felt Ash getting into her sleeping bag with her, and hold her close to his chest.

"What about now?" he asked Serena.

"Much, much better," Serena said. She smiled, and fell asleep close to Ash.

Ash and Serena woke up to hear their tent door flap being unzipped.

"'Morning love birds!" Bonnie said in the most obnoxious voice she could. Then she looked into the tent.

"Oh wow, Ash, you couldn't even stay in your own sleeping bag for one night while Serena was in the same tent as you."

Ash blushed, "No, it's not like that! Serena was cold, and I…" he stammered, but was cut off by Bonnie.

"Sure you were!" She said, managing to sound even more annoying than when she woke up. "Well, Dawn is making breakfast, so you guys might want to wake up. After all, after we get through Reflection Cave, Riley says we'll be in Shalour City! You'll get your next badge there!"

Bonnie left, and zipped up the tent flap.

Serena didn't want to get up. It felt so good lying in a sleeping bag with Ash. Luckily for her, Ash didn't want to get up either, because his clothes were on the other side of the bed, and it was extremely cold outside. They stayed there for maybe ten minutes before Bonnie came back.

Bonnie had a mischievous look on her face. "Well if you two are done making out, why don't you two come out and eat with the rest of us?" She screamed as loud as she possibly could from outside the tent, causing every human and pokemon within a half mile radius to look up curiously towards the sound.

Ash and Serena blushed inside the tent, glad that no one else was there to see them.

"W-well, I guess we have to get up before Bonnie comes back and says… more things." Serena finally said.

"Yeah, we'll have to remember to get her back later," Ash said, as he gave Serena a playful wink, causing her to blush some more. Then the two reluctantly got out of the sleeping bag and got dressed, despite Ash complaining that it was cold as he rushed to get a pair of pants on.

After eating a warm breakfast, the group cleaned up, packed up, and hurried up towards Shalour City. It turns out that Reflection Cave lives up to its name, and there were natural mirrors everywhere.

Riley tapped Serena on the shoulder when he saw that she was always looking into a mirror and fixing her hair, or her skirt, or something.

"You know, you don't have to look absolutely perfect in order to please Ash." He told Serena.

"O-ok, I'll remember that." Serena said, looking down and blushing.

"Wow, look at all of these new pokemon!" Dawn and Clemont exclaimed when they stumbled upon a Carbink.

A few hours, and a couple trainer battles later, the group finally arrived in Shalour City.

"Yeah, let's go challenge the gym right away!" Ash cried, but everyone else had other plans.

"Let's go get our rooms and take showers first, we could all use one after being in that cave all morning." Dawn suggested, earning the affirmative nods of every- well, almost everyone in the group.

"B-but, what about the gym battle?" Ash whined as he was led by the hand by Serena towards the pokemon center.

"You'll have plenty of time for that later, right now, we are going to the pokemon center." She said.

"Aww, that stinks." Pouted Ash. Serena giggled. She thought Ash was cute when he was upset.

After about an hour, everyone was ready and met in the lobby of the center.

"Alright, now can we go to the gym?" Asked Ash.

This time, no one found any excuse not to, and the group immediately walked towards the Shalour gym.

The blonde gym leader was not having the best day. When she saw the ebony-haired trainer she had met before walk into her gym, her heart beat faster.

"Hello, welcome to the Shalour gym…" she cooed.

"Hello, hey, didn't I meet you from before?" Ash pondered out loud.

Korrina was pretty upset that this trainer didn't remember her, but her expression softened and said "Yes, but I'm sure that you are here for a battle."

Korrina led the group towards the battlefield, and turned around to address the group. "The spectators can sit over there, while the challenger can go over there." She explained. Then she saw the boy holding hands with the honey-blonde girl.

"Looks like he's already taken…." Thought Korrina. "Looks like this day is horrible after all…"

"Lucario! Use aura sphere!" Korrina said, with sweat on her face. Ash had already taken out her machoke and her hawlucha. She had only taken out Ash's Riolu.

Aura sphere hit Fletchinder in the face, causing her to spiral out of the sky. Fletchinder landed hard, and ended up with swirls in her eyes.

"Fletchinder is unable to battle, the winner is Lucario!" the ref called.

"You worked hard Fletchinder," Ash said, returning the bird pokemon. "Looks like we both only have one pokemon left." Ash said, addressing Korrina. "But this is my secret weapon. Go honedge!"

Honedge appeared in front of Lucario, shooting off sparkles when coming out.

"Huh, I didn't know Kalos had seals, and I never would've expected Ash to be interested in them." Dawn said.

Serena looked at Dawn with a confused expression. "What are seals?" she asked.

"You don't have seals here? Then what were those sparkles?" Dawn questioned.

"That," Riley explained, "Is what happens naturally when a shiny pokemon comes out of its ball, hence the 'shiny' name."

"Wow, I want a shiny pokemon too!" Bonnie exclaimed.

Meanwhile, Korrina made a face expressing absolute confusion. "What? A steel type pokemon is your secret weapon?" Korrina asked.

Ash smirked, knowing that Korrina must not know about the ghost type. He decided to take this advantage and set up.

"Honedge, swords dance!" Ash called. Immediately honedge began to dance in a very rhythmic pattern, raising his attack.

"Well if he wants to do that, we might as well wrap this battle up!" Korrina decided. "Lucario, use force palm!"

Lucario rushed towards honedge, but when he tried to hit honedge, his paw/fist went through it, as if honedge was not there. A very puzzled lucario was even more surprised when honedge suddenly appeared behind him and attacked him with a very powerful shadow sneak.

"What? How can that honedge attack by itself without commands?" cried a thoroughly confused Korrina, who wasn't familiar with the concepts of talking using the aura.

Ash smirked. "Now use shadow claw!"

Honedge hit Lucario, dealing a critical hit, and causing Lucario to faint.

"Yes!" Ash cried happily.

Korrina returned Lucario and walked towards Ash with a box.

"Ash, you have earned this Rumble badge." She said, not wanting to look Ash in the eye.

"Yes! We just earned the Rumble badge!" Ash cried happily.

His pokemon also let out similar shouts of joy, before they were returned.

"Ash," Korrina started, "If your girlfriend ever dumps you, you can always come find me." Korrina said, giving Ash a playful wink.

"U-uh, I'll think about it." Ash said, causing Korrina to blush. Ash said goodbye to Korrina, and walked out of the gym, followed by his friends. He was glad that Serena hadn't heard that last little conversation with Korrina.

Happy with his new badge, Ash decided that they could go back for the pokemon center to rest up and walked towards the center.

"Wait!" Serena said, grabbing Ash by the hand.

"Huh?" Ash turned around and wondered what this is about.

"We haven't had dinner yet…" Serena said.

"Oh yeah!" Ash hit himself in the head, couldn't believing that he had forgotten about eating, and causing everyone to chuckle.

"There is a pretty good restaurant here…" Clemont said, with his face in a map.

"Great! I'm famished!" Dawn said, and on cue, her stomach growled.

The group happily walked to the restaurant and had a grand time, with the highlight being Ash asking the waiter for the largest dish that they offered. By the time the waiter came around to ask them if everything was ok, Ash had already finished it and wanted to order a second.

On the way back to the pokemon center, Serena leaned on Ash for support, and whispered into his ear "Thank you for tonight…"

"It wasn't even my idea!" Ash said, refusing to not give credit to the people who deserved it, namely Serena. This also startled the other people in the group, because they hadn't heard Serena's whispering.

Looking down, he discovered that Serena had already fallen asleep. He chuckled to himself and carried her to their room, while everyone else went to their separate rooms. Ash laid Serena on the bed, and went to get ready for bed. When he came out, he discovered that Serena was sleeping, but she had crawled into the bed, and changed her clothes. "So she just wanted me to carry her…" Ash thought, and got into bed, falling asleep with Serena in his arms.

How was it? Please tell me!"


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Hello, I found out that some stuff that I originally planned on doing today got canceled, so I ended up with some free time! Here's the new chapter, enjoy!

I don't own pokemon

In the morning, everyone woke up and ate breakfast. They decided to stay in Shalour City for a little bit, and see what kind of shops they had. By noon, Riley had stocked up on different types of potions, and Ash got some new pokeballs. Dawn and Serena wanted to go shop for clothes, but were outvoted four to two because nobody else wanted to. They were about to leave the city, when Korrina roller bladed into Ash, knocking him to the floor.

"Hey! Watch where you're go- oh, hey Ash!" Korrina said when she realized that she had crashed into Ash.

Korrina offered him her hand, which he accepted, and pulled him back up.

"Thanks…" Ash said, still a little shaken up by the collision. Korrina blushed and looked away. Both Dawn and Serena noticed this, but luckily, they both did not overreact.

"I hope Ash tells her that he already had a girlfriend…." Serena sighed, not wanting to lose Ash.

"If Ash is not willing to leave Serena for me, he'd better not leave Serena for her!" Dawn screamed in her head, but knew if she said that out loud, it would make everyone see her in a bad light.

"Hey Ash, do you mind… if… you know… I come travel with you?" Korrina asked.

"Don't you have a gym to run back here?" Ash questioned.

"Yeah… but…."

"Korrina, I already have a girlfriend, and I am not willing to leave her for anyone. I hope you understand." Said Ash, finally deciding to just tell Korrina head-on.

"Yeah… ok…. Have fun on your journey." Korrina said as she skated away, tears falling from her eyes.

Serena was glad that Ash had rejected her, but now felt kinda bad for Korrina. Stop it, she told herself, you can't keep feeling bad for girls Ash rejects, because Ash is her's and no one has the right to take him from her. "This is a feeling that you have to get used to, since you are Ash's girlfriend." She thought. And with that, the group decided to continue towards Coumarine City.

They walked for maybe fifteen minutes, when Serena suddenly collapsed. She coughed, and spat out some blood, and she could swear she saw traces of purple in the blood. Riley saw this too, and cried "The drapion poison must have came back! Clemont, Bonnie and Dawn, go into the surrounding forest, and find as many Pecha berries as possible!" He kneeled down besides Serena, and Ash copied his actions.

Ash picked Serena's head off the ground and cradled her in his arms.

"Please don't die," Ash pleaded, but Serena had so much pain flaring through her body, that she didn't know if she would be able to live. She coughed up more blood and said "Ash, I may not make it, If I don't, you should make Dawn your girlfriend. She is a very good friend, and she'll take care of you well." But Ash, with tears in his eyes replied "No, you can't die! The others are in the forest, finding Pecha berries. You'll be ok!"

Riley tried spraying Serena with a full heal. He smiled when the expression of pain on her face lessoned. However, this was only for a little moment, and Serena cried out in pain again after several seconds.

"So this full heal will only make the pain _partly_ go away…" thought Riley, he was still thinking about how to save Serena, when Clemont ran back with three large Pecha berries with him.

"We… *pant pant* found a *pant* Pecha berry tree, *pant pant* they will be back immediately with *pant* more of these."

Riley gave an acknowledging nod to Clemont, and busily fed Serena the Pecha berries. Dawn and Bonnie came back, with a basket of them, and they continued feeding Serena until she stopped coughing blood, and the painful expression on her face was completely gone.

"Whew," Bonnie said, wiping some sweat off her forehead.

"Since Serena has fainted from blood-loss, why don't we wait for her to wake up?" suggested Clemont.

"Good idea, we can go gather some more Pecha berries in case this ever happens again. We were lucky to have found an accessible Pecha berry tree so close to us. It may not be the case next time." Riley said. "I'll go pick berries with Bonnie and Clemont." And with that, the three set off in the direction of the tree.

Meanwhile, Dawn sat closer to Ash, who was oblivious towards her actions, and still trying to make Serena as comfortable as possible, even though she was unconscious.

"Ash, could you tell me why Serena suddenly collapsed?" Dawn asked.

Ash blinked. "Well, there is the man from Team Rocket named Eldritch, he had a drapion and commanded it to use poison jab on us, I put up an auric barrier, but it shattered and…."

"… So the doctor told her that the poison might come back later, and Pecha berries would help." Ash finished.

Dawn nodded in understanding, and Riley and the two siblings also came back, with many Pecha berries. They stored them away in a way that would preserve the shape of the berries, and won't be crushed by the other things in their bags, and all sat down to wait for Serena.

After waiting for several minutes, Ash grew impatient and said "Hey, how about I carry her until she wakes up, so we don't lose very much travelling time?"

Riley shrugged. "It's your choice I guess, I mean, you'll be the one carrying her."

"Great!" Ash said as he gently picked up Serena and positioned her on his back. Everyone got up, and continued towards Coumarine city.

After walking for a while, something in Riley's pack started glowing. His face lit up. "The egg!" he cried as he stopped and dug through his pack, taking out and egg, that had started to crack. Moments later, the egg completely shattered. There was a bright light, and when it was gone, two things happened. The first thing is that instead of an egg, there was now an aron in Riley's hands. The second, is that Serena woke up, and found Ash giving him a piggy back ride, and blushed.

"Wow, what's that pokemon?" Serena exclaimed, referring to the aron.

"You're awake!" everyone except Riley cried, who apparently is to "cool" to say things like that. Instead, he looked down at his newly hatched aron. "This was an aron egg that I got at iron island. This little guy was made for taking down much stronger pokemon." Riley explained. "Aron!" the little pokemon cried happily and nuzzled his new trainer. Everyone thought that this was very cute, and even Dedenne jumped out from the pouch it travelled in to say hello.

"Where are you going Dedenne?" Bonnie asked, not wanting to lose "her" only pokemon.

"It's ok Bonnie, Dedenne just wants to go say hi." Clemont explained.

"Oh… I knew that!" Bonnie said.

Ash was really excited, and after he safely put Serena down, he cried "Let's keep going towards Coumarine City!"

Everyone chuckled at his enthusiasm, and continued walking. Unfortunately, the group ran into someone whom they really DID NOT want to see on the way there…

Eldritch smirked. He had just found out the Team Flare had captured Yvetel. "Now my plain is one step closer…" he muttered. Then he yelled to the group of grunts. "Break yourself into groups of four, travel around the region, and find out where Team Flare's base is. When you find it, report to me."

"Yes sir!" came the reply.

Eldritch flew down the path on his Honchkrow, until he saw them, or more specifically, saw _her_.

He snarled, and yelled. "Goodra, take them all out!" Goodra was released from her pokeball, and faced six very startled people.

Riley was the first to recover and yelled, "Go Aron!"

Aron happily hopped down from Riley's arms and faced the giant dragon type pokemon.

Eldritch couldn't hold in a laugh. "Are you trying to MOCK me!?" he exclaimed, still not believing his eyes.

"You might be arrogant now, but don't be so sure you'll win." Riley replied calmly.

"Ha! That aron must've just hatched not too long ago! You really think that it can beat my experienced goodra?" Eldritch added.

Ash finally couldn't hold in his rage anymore. He willed himself to create the largest aura sphere that he could, which isn't say much, and he launched it at Eldritch. Honchkrow swiftly dodged out of the way, but the wind caused by the aura sphere blew off the hood of Eldritch, revealing a purple haired trainer.

"Paul!?" Dawn asked, not believing her eyes.

"I knew it." Ash muttered under his breath.

Paul growled, they all now knew his true identity. "Doesn't matter, goodra, use flamethrower! I want them all dead!" He snarled.

Goodra obliged, and red hot flames curled towards aron. Aron didn't care, and stepped forward, right into the center of it.

"Huh?" Paul asked curiously.

When the flames died, Aron was still standing there. "How did it survive that hit?" Paul wondered.

"Aron's ability is sturdy, so it cannot be knocked out in one hit." Riley explained to everyone. "Now Aron, use endeavor!"

Aron obeyed, and caused Goodra to look just as tired as himself, then miraculously, Aron began to look more and more refreshed, until it was as if he had not been in the battle at all!

"H-how?" Paul asked himself, clearly not believing it.

"Now finish it off with quick attack!" Riley commanded. Aron launched himself at Goodra, hit her, but bounced off. Paul chuckled, he can still win this. "Now Goodra, use-" but he stopped when he saw that Goodra had swirls for eyes. "You worthless pokemon, couldn't even beat a newly hatched pokemon. I don't want you. I needed an extra party slot for when I catch _it_ anyway." And with that, Paul flew away, leaving a teary eyed goodra in front of Ash and his friends.

Serena felt bad for this abandoned goodra, and walked forward to comfort her.

"Hey, it's alright, that guy is just rude, and he got mad. If you want to, you can come with us!"

Goodra stopped crying and looked at this new trainer. She was willing to forgive her just like that? In the current circumstances, Goodra couldn't say no, and nodded her head.

Serena smiled, and took out one of the pokeballs she had gotten in Shalour City. "Go pokeball!" she exclaimed as she gently tossed it at Goodra. Goodra went inside the ball, and the ball didn't even shake.

"Yes! I caught a goodra!" Serena exclaimed.

"Congratulations!" Ash said, giving her a thumbs up.

"Yes, all goodra are strong too, considering that they have to evolve from sligoo." Clemont added.

Meanwhile, Dawn was even more crushed. "I can't believe he would leave me to go join Team Rocket…." She thought sadly, but acted indifferent, because she didn't want to ruin the happy mood for Serena. "She's so lucky to have Ash…"

"Wait, how could aron beat that goodra?" wondered Clemont.

"Well you see, aron has the ability sturdy, so it can't be knocked out in one hit. Since it is at such a low level, goodra's flamethrower brought it down to where it barely lived. Then I used endeavor, which brings the opponent to the exact amount of health that my pokemon has. I gave aron a shell bell, which gives aron 1/8 of the damage he dealt back, and since goodra was so high leveled, bringing it down to almost fainting means that 1/8 of that will bring aron back to full health. Then I finished it off with a quick attack, which had priority." Riley explained.

"Uh… could you speak English next time?" Bonnie asked.

Riley snorted lightly. "You'll learn about items and abilities and such when you become a trainer." He told Bonnie.

Then they continued towards Coumarine city, and although Serena felt that she didn't get to see most of the route because she was unconscious, overall, she felt pleased that she had managed to catch this goodra, so now she has three members on her team.

Much much later...

It was nearing nighttime, and Coumarine City was still not in sight. "According to my map, we should be there by now, even if we take into account Serena's poison delay, and the Team Rocket delay." Clemont said.

"Well, that means we'll just have to camp out again!" Bonnie said with excitement.

"Ugh…" said Clemont, but of course, he couldn't really do anything about it.

"Great, let's have dinner! I'm so hungry right now!" Ash said, rubbing his belly.

"You always are hungry!" Serena said as she gave Ash a playful hit, and got out the cooking utensils.

Suddenly, she felt herself get dizzy, and her pain shot through her chest, and almost dropped the pan. Ash stepped forward to help her, but Serena already got out a Pecha berry out of her bag and popped it into her mouth. Upon swallowing, Serena immediately felt the pain go away.

"Good thing I had those berries!" Serena said and smiled at Ash.

Ash smiled back and Serena sighed in happiness. "That smile… and those eyes… I wish I could stare into them forever…" Serena thought.

Everyone let out their pokemon, and soon, everyone were friends with each other, even the newly hatched aron and the newly caught goodra.

Serena then proceeded to cook dinner with Dawn, and after everyone had eaten enough (even Ash,) they cleaned up and got ready for bed.

"Aww, we can't make s'mores tonight?" Bonnie whined.

"See, there are things about camping that make it NOT perfect." Clemont said, "Like for example, the fact that there is a 65% chance of rain that should begin in about 35 minutes. If we made a fire, we wouldn't be able to enjoy it for that long, and we might get caught in the rain."

"Aww, that's no fair!" Bonnie pouted.

"No need to worry! I'm sure we'll get plenty more chances to camp out!" Dawn said to Bonnie.

This earned an enthusiastic cheer from Bonnie, and a loud groan from Clemont, and everybody laughed.

After everyone retreated to their designated tents, Serena crawled into Ash's sleeping bag.

"Good night Ash," Serena said. She could faintly hear his reply, and she drifted off to sleep.

Serena woke up to find Ash tied to a wooden pole. Eldritch, or as she had learned, Paul, stood in front of him with a green-looking pokemon.

"Sceptile, use bullet seed!" Paul cried.

"Sceptiiiiile!" the pokemon cried and spit seeds covered with green energy at Ash.

Serena opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. She tried to run towards Ash, but it was no use. Her legs would not obey her. She heard the bullet seed's make contact, and she also heard Ash's screams of pain.

*pitter patter, pitter patter, pitter patter, pitter patter, pitter patter, pitter patter, pitter patter, pitter patter* the seeds hit Ash one after another, and Serena started crying. Paul turned towards her and smirked, oh how she wanted to punch that bastard in the face right now!

Meanwhile, Ash woke up to find Serena squeezing him into a hug. She muttered "No, please… Stop it!" and Ash decided that she must be having a bad dream again. Sighing, he shook Serena awake.

Serena actually woke up this time, to hear * pitter patter, pitter patter, pitter patter* and panicked, but then she realized that Ash was hugging her. "He's fine!" she thought and let out a sigh of relief.

"It's ok Serena, it was only a bad dream… you're safe now." Ash said as he comforted her by rubbing her back.

"I'm safe!? I'm just glad that you're safe!" thought Serena, but didn't say it out loud.

"W-what's making that sound?" she asked.

"Oh nothing, it's just some rain. You should get some more sleep now." Ash said.

Serena nuzzled her head back onto Ash's chest and fell asleep, knowing that her nightmares probably would not come back, at least not tonight…

So….. how did you guys like it? Please review! It makes me a better writer, also, if you want to give me ideas, that's nice too. I have a general story line already thought out, but if you want to have me add in some details that would make you happy, tell me!


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Sorry for the slight delay, here is the new chapter!

I don't own pokemon

After a long and stormy night, morning came, but the rain still did not show any signs of ending. Ash and his friends woke up early, and tried to wait out the rain. Serena didn't mind at all, for she got to spend all morning alone, cuddling in a sleeping bag in the tent. She silently hoped that the rain would never stop.

This could not be said for Ash, because although he loved Serena very much, and if the rain didn't stop, they would get more time together, it would also mean that he could not be travelling towards the next city where his gym battle was. Oh well, at least he was stuck in a tent with Serena, and not Bonnie. Sure, he didn't hate Bonnie, but she had a way of making Ash feel nervous, especially if she was talking about his relationship with Serena. No, he would not enjoy being stuck in a tent with Bonnie at all. He sighed and tried not to think about the distance that they could have covered this morning if not for the rain, and enjoyed Serena's warmth.

Speaking of Bonnie, she was busy giving Dawn a hard time. Whether it was singing songs about her and Ash, or taunting her, or teasing her, she would always find some way to make her blush furiously, and Dawn wished the rain would end. Actually, Dawn was thinking about rushing out of the tent, to Ash and Serena's, despite being drenched with rain in the process. At least she wouldn't be stuck with Bonnie, and Ash would probably fuss over her, being completely wet and all. She smiled, imagining what that would be like, then realized that that would never sighed, if she had told Ash sooner, she would be in Serena's place right now. She didn't hate Serena, she just wished that Serena... didn't exist, so Ash could be her's. Dawn imagined what they might be doing right now.

"I'll bet you wished you were in a tent with Ash right now…" Bonnie said.

Dawn crawled back into her sleeping bag and covered her head with the pillow. She tried to ignore Bonnie, but Bonnie would always find some new way to get on her nerves. Why couldn't the rain stop right now?

Serena smiled, how lucky was she? First of all, it was already noon, and the downpour still remained consistent, Fennekin and Pikachu were still sleeping, and curled up in a corner, leaving her completely alone with Ash. She let out a happy sigh and leaned into Ash's chest. She knew Ash was probably getting impatient, and hungry since they didn't have breakfast yet, and she felt a little selfish for enjoying this moment, but hey, it's not like she gets these types of moments normally. She smiled again. "I love you..." she whispered to Ash.

After about another hour, the rain finally stopped, leaving everything outside the tent completely and utterly drenched. Fortunately, everything was safely inside the tents when the rain first started the night before.

"Finally!" Ash cried when they stopped hearing the sound of rain hitting the tent. He got out of the sleeping bag and stretched, earning a sad whine from Serena. As Ash was getting dressed, Serena felt the familiar pain of the poison course through her body again, and reached for her backpack, taking out the last few Pecha berries. She ate them, and felt better, and decided that if the pain came back with the rain still going on, she might have died. "I guess it's not completely bad…" she muttered.

"What was that?" Asked Ash, who was busy putting on a pair of pants.

"Nothing, nothing! It was just that the pain from the poison came back, and I had to eat the last few berries, so I'm glad that the rain ended so I can go get some more." Serena said, without stopping to catch her breath.

"Hmmm, that didn't happen at all when I was holding you…" Ash thought out loud. "I guess we have to do that kind of thing more often," Serena smiled. This was just what she wanted.

"Of course, I wouldn't mind, because I would get to spend time with a beautiful girl." Ash said and winked. Despite being together for a while now, Serena couldn't help but blush to Ash's complement.

After they were dressed, the couple stepped out of the tent and were greeted by their friends, who were also excited that the rain ended.

"I guess we have to cook twice as much, since we skipped breakfast." Dawn said.

"Well, we'd better get started then," said Serena, who was busy getting more Pecha berries out of Riley's backpack.

"Ugh, why does everything have to be so wet?" complained Bonnie as they ate their brunch standing up.

"Because Arceus doesn't like you…" muttered Clemont.

"WHAT WAS THAT!?" Bonnie asked in a loud noise, startling all the wild pokemon nearby. "Did I hear you say that the Lumiose City gym leader is -MMFM!" That last part was because Clemont blocked Bonnie's mouth with his hand. He looked up and saw everybody giving him curious glances.

"Hello everyone… heh heh, just… dealing with my sister here…" he said, still not letting Bonnie talk.

When the group was finally done eating, they tore down the tents, packed up their things and continued towards Coumarine City.

It was late in the afternoon when the group finally made it to Coumarine City. Ash, like always, wanted to challenge the gym right away, and finding no reason not to, the group headed towards the Coumarine gym.

Upon arriving at the gym, they found a sheet of paper tacked onto the front door that read: _I, Ramos, the Coumarine gym leader, regrettably inform you that I will be out of town for a few weeks. Any challengers, please wait for me to come back before you challenge this gym. Thank you, -Ramos._

"Aww, that sucks, a few weeks?" complained Ash.

"Well you don't know, he could have put that sheet up a few weeks ago." Serena told him.

"No need to worry, I'm sure we'll find something fun to do while we wait for him to come back." Said Dawn.

They group wandered around the city, without any particular goal, until eventually they found a flyer in a building.

"Wow, this is a pokemon tournament!" Clemont said.

"Yeah, a triple battle tournament!" Ash said.

"And it's in Lumiose city too!" cried Bonnie, more excited than anyone, even though she couldn't compete in it.

"So how about we head towards Lumiose City, and compete in the tournament while we wait for Ramos to return?" suggested Riley.

"Oh, alright… I suppose…" said Ash.

The group decided that they would go to Lumiose City first thing tomorrow, but since it was getting dark, the group went to the pokemon center, ate a warm meal, and headed off to bed.

After waking up and eating breakfast, Ash and his friends started walking towards Lumiose City.

"It's so great to be going home!" Clemont said.

"Yeah," Bonnie said, suddenly realizing what she could do. "I'll be so excited to watch Ash battle Clemont, I-I mean, the Lumiose gym leader!" Bonnie said, trying to make it sound like if she made an honest mistake.

"Lumiose gym leader?" Ash wondered

"Clemont… do you have something you want to tell us?" Serena said, in an interrogation voice.

"U-uh, n-no! Definitely not! Nope, nothing to tell here!" Clemont said.

"He means to tell you that he is the gym leader of Lumiose city, isn't that right?" Bonnie said.

"Bonnie, one of these days…" Clemont muttered.

"Is that correct?" Dawn asked.

"Yes." Clemont said, hanging his head.

"Hey, it's ok, you don't need to hide it from us, and after all, beating a friend who is also a gym leader feels great!" Ash said.

"Yeah…" Clemont said, as he gave Bonnie a glare that said 'I'll get you later.'

Suddenly, a group of four trainers ran past Ash.

"Come on Trevor! You're so slow! We'll be late for the tournament!" A boy that looked about Ash's age called toward his friend who was lagging behind.

"I-I can't run anymore!" the boy with light-brown hair complained.

"Calem, we won't be late, we have all day to sign up!" A girl with dark brown hair said.

"But, then I won't be in the first half of the tournament!" Calem argued.

"Stop arguing guys! You're making yourselves look bad in front of strangers!" the last boy, who was rather, well, large said.

Upon finally noticing Ash and his friends, the four trainers walked over to introduce themselves.

Introductions took kind of long, since there were ten people in total, but after a few minutes, everyone knew one another. Both groups continued to chat as they continued walking to Lumiose city.

"So are you guys headed to Lumiose city for the triple battle tournament too?" the girl they now knew as Shauna said.

"Yep!" Bonnie cried enthusiastically, "but we have kind of a problem, because I'm not old enough to participate, so we can only enter one team because we only have five people who can enter." She explained.

"Hey, we have four people, so that means if one of us teams up with two people from your group, we will have three teams of three!" Calem said.

"This is sort of like an ionic bond in science, where one atom 'gives' another one an electron and…" Trevor started, but was interrupted by Shauna, who hit him on the head lightly. "Trevor! This isn't school! Stop reciting the words of some book you read."

"Ok, let's refocus," Serena suggested, "So if we have three teams, who is going to be on who's team?"

"How about I go with you and Dawn, Calem will team with Tierno and Trevor, and Ash will be on a team with Riley and Clemont?" Shauna suggested.

Everyone agreed, except for Serena, who wanted to be on Ash's team. She decided not to complain about it in front of these new people, and tried to enjoy the company of Ash, and the feeling of holding his hand as they walked.

"So Ash, how many badges do you have? I have four." Calem said smugly.

"I only have three… but I would have four if Ramos wasn't gone." Ash said.

Calem tried to hide his grin, unfortunately Shauna noticed it, and she gave him a glare.

"Oh, Ramos said he was going to some place to see if he can see some bird pokemon." Shauna said. "He probably is going to be back by the time this triples tournament is over."

They continued walking nonstop for a couple of hours.

When everyone arrived in Lumiose, the very first thing they did was go to the pokemon center and get some rooms. After they put all their unnecessary gear down, everyone rushed to go sign up for the tournament.

Later…

Ash calmly waited for everyone else to sign up. They had waited in line for maybe forty minutes, and he wanted to act like a gentleman in front Serena. When it was finally his turn, he signed up to be on a team with Clemont and Riley.

"Which pokemon will you be using?" the attendant asked politely.

"Uh… this one!" he said as he fished Honedge's ball out of his pocket.

Upon scanning the ball to make sure that it was a legal entry, the attendant's eyes shot open, and her mouth hung to the ground.

"Wow! I've never seen a honedge with this color!" she said, still not believing the screen. "You must be a very lucky young man!" she said to Ash as she handed him back the ball.

"Thank you!" Ash said, as he took the ball, as well as some other papers with information on them.

"Your team is actually going to be battling in the second battle of the tournament, make sure you get here at least half an hour earlier than the printed time, and of course, come even earlier if you want to watch the first battle." The attendant said. "Your team number is three, and don't lose this wristband!"

Ash put on the wristband, signifying that he was a competitor in the tournament, and mentally jotted down three in his head. Then he went back to rejoin his friends.

"Hey, it's still pretty early, what do you guys want to do now?" Calem asked.

"Actually, according to my watch, it is almost six." Trevor corrected.

"How about we go to a fancy restaurant and have dinner?" Dawn suggested, with hearts in her eyes.

"Ok, but first, we'll have to go shopping for formal clothes!" Shauna said.

All the boys groaned except for Riley. They walked slowing as the girls ran excitedly towards the many clothing shops in Lumiose.

Two hours later….

"Wow, you look really good!" Serena said to Ash, who was wearing a black tuxedo, a formal white shirt, and a red tie.

"Thanks! You too!" Ash replied, and tried not to stare. Serena was wearing a strapless pink dress, and it made her look more beautiful at before.

Seeing Ash's expression, Serena couldn't help but blush. When they got to the lobby, Serena noticed that all the boys (except for Riley) pretty much dressed in the same style, with black tuxes, with the only thing different between them being the color of the ties.

Calem wore a white tie, Trevor an orange one, and Tierno a light blue one, and Clemont a light green one.

Riley however, was wearing a suit similar to the color of his regular blue cloak, and also a matching blue tie.

Serena also noticed Bonnie wearing a light yellow dress, Shauna in a purple dress, and Dawn in a dark blue strapless dress. Serena was instantly jealous of Dawn, and she hoped Ash would not think Dawn looked better.

"Why do I have to leave Dedenne here again?" Bonnie asked. They had all dropped their pokemon who normally don't stay in their balls in Riley's room.

"Because fancy restaurants don't allow pokemon in," Riley explained. "I'm sure they will have a safe and fun time with Lucario watching them."

The group left the center, and Clemont lead them towards a really fancy restaurant. Bonnie stood at the back of the group, no doubt thinking of some more things she could do to embarrass her friends, not too much, of course.

She smirked, and then ran up to the front of the group with Clemont.

Oh boy, Bonnie's at it again…. How was it? Please review!


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Hey guys, sorry for the late update, but I was pretty busy these past few days. I hope that the wait was worth it though, and that you'll enjoy this next chapter. Also, something to consider:

I know Bonnie is acting slightly out of character, but I think that it is not completely unbelievable that Bonnie wants to mess with Ash/Serena's relationship, as well as Dawn, and others. She clearly wants to mess with Clemont in the anime, so I think that it's fine that she's acting like that. Yes, she doesn't propose for Clemont in this story, but I think it is feasible to believe that Bonnie is satisfied enough messing with Ash and Serena/Dawn that she won't need to mess with Clemont. With that said, enjoy the next chapter!

I don't own pokemon

While they were waiting for their food to come, Ash decided to talk with his new friends.

"So what pokemon will you be using in tomorrow's competition?" he asked.

Calem grinned. "I'm using my Chesnaught, Tierno is using his Crawdaunt, and Trevor is using his Raichu." He said smugly.

"I am going to be using my Greninja." Shauna added. "Although I am quite interested at what Dawn and Serena are choosing to use, after all, I am their teammate, aren't I?"

"I'm using my Togekiss." Dawn said, trying not to sound really interested.

"W-well, I didn't really have to think much, since Eevee and Fennekin both don't have much experience, so I'm going to be using my goodra." Serena said.

"Ok, and you guys?" Calem asked, directing his question at Riley, Clemont and Ash.

"Lucario," Riley simply said.

"And I'm using my heliolisk, because I feel bad about not using him for so long." Clemont said.

"What about you Ash?" Serena said as she took Ash's hand in her own.

"I decided to use Honedge, because I think he could use the battle experience." Ash said, completely oblivious to the glance that Calem gave him, but Riley saw it, and he interpreted it correctly as a 'ha, I'm so much better than you' glance. He decided to tell Ash later.

The food came, and Ash was disappointed that his dish was not there.

"Your order takes longer to cook, because it is so much larger than the other orders." The waiter explained. Pretty soon, he brought out a large dish and sat it in front of Ash.

"Finally!" he exclaimed, and dug into his meal.

Serena was having a great time at the restaurant, (which, by the way, will remain unnamed because I suck at coming up with these types of things) and they talked about many things and everything was fine, until Bonnie stopped eating and asked her question.

"So Serena, when is the baby coming?" she asked innocently.

This caused Ash to choke on his food in surprise, and Riley calmly passed him a glass of water.

"W-what?" Serena asked, her face turning crimson red.

"You know, the thing you told me about…" Bonnie said, and couldn't hold in a mischievous grin.

Dawn furrowed her eyebrows. "Serena, is there something that you wanted to tell us?" she asked, clearly not wanting to think about what she might have done with Ash.

"N-no, there isn't," Serena said, clearly not believing that this was happening to her, in front of everybody.

"Alright, that's enough, Bonnie, I told you not to publically humiliate people like that!" Clemont said.

"Aww Clemont, you always have to come ruin all of the fun…" Bonnie pouted.

"Wait, I'm confused, is there a baby or not?" Tierno asked, earning him a hit on his head from a very annoyed and enraged Shauna.

"Stupid…" Trevor muttered quietly.

"No there isn't." Ash said before he continued eating.

"Is this the type of thing that always happens?" Shauna whispered to Dawn when everything seemed to settle down and everyone was quiet (except for Clemont, who was busy lecturing Bonnie about manners).

"As far as I know, yes." She whispered back.

Serena was quiet for the rest of the night, afraid to say anything that might cause more embarrasement.

When they were done eating, they split the bill, and went back to the pokemon center to retire for the night.

When Ash and Serena got into their room, Ash stopped Serena and said "I'm sorry about what Bonnie said in the restaurant, she was just trying to have fun and mess with you."

"I know," she replied, biting her bottom lip. She winced as she remembered how uncomfortable she felt during that time.

Ash noticed this, and tried his best to comfort her. "Hey, don't think about it too much, no one is going to judge you because of what Bonnie said. Especially since it's Bonnie. And we should go rest because we have that big tournament to worry about tomorrow!" Ash said.

After they were done getting ready for bed, Serena hopped into bed and got as close as she possibly could with Ash. She instantly felt warm and happy on the inside, almost like when she got to end training for Rhyhorn Racing ten minutes early, but better, a lot better.

"You know, are you going to be able to control goodra? She is a new pokemon to you, and she might not listen to you. That happened to me with Charizard. I raised him from a charmander, but then he didn't really listen to me in cases where I needed him." Ash said.

"Yeah, I thought about it, and if I want any chances of winning, I'm going to have to take the risk and enter goodra." She said into Ash's chest, then yawned. "Ash, I'm tired, let's stop talking and start sleeping."

Ash smirked. "Sure, I'll shut up right now!" Then, he pretended to act like a machine, and in a robotic voice, said "Shutting up! Shutting up. Shutting up….." until he closed his eyes and remained silent.

Serena giggled, and closed her eyes, allowing all the tiredness from that day to overwhelm her and draw her into a deep slumber. "Why do I always sleep so well when I'm with Ash?" she wondered, just before she left the world of reality and entered the world of dreams. (oooooo, so poetic.)

Serena woke up, and found herself alone in bed. Trying not to panic, she got up and checked the table. Sure enough, there was a note. This time, however, Ash decided not to mess with her, and told her that he was already at breakfast.

"Of course he is…" Serena thought as she got dressed.

Serena found everyone already eating by the time she got down to the cafeteria.

"What took you so long?" Bonnie asked. "Ash, Clemont and Riley's match starts in one and a half hours, and we don't want to miss the first match of the tournament either! We were just about to leave without you…"

"I'm sorry! Sorry!" Serena said, as she quickly got some food and ate.

After they were all ready, the group went towards the stadium where the tournament was going to take place. They got there just in time to see the end of the opening ceremony, and six trainers, three on each side, rose from platforms. Ash looked at them, and saw three regular-looking trainers on one end, and three not-so-regular looking trainers on the other end. One of them was a female with long red hair, wearing a leather tunic, one was a bulky-looking trainer with a sleeveless vest, and the final trainer looked like an average schoolboy, with extra large glasses.

"In this first round, the previous champions, Marla, Chad and Sheldon!" the crowd cheered, and after a while, the announcer silenced them. "Contestants! Call out your pokemon!"

The three average trainers didn't look good compared to the champions. They called out a granbull, a hariyama, and a Boldore. Meanwhile on the other side, Marla sent out her Salamence, Chad a tyranitar, and Sheldon a metagross.

"Well they're screwed." Muttered Bonnie as they found their way to some open seats.

"Salamence, use dragon dance!" the redhead cried out, as her salamence began to move in an intriguing way.

"Granbull! Super fang!" "Hariyama, arm thrust!" "Boldore, rock blast!" the three trainers cried, realizing that they needed to take that salamence out if they are going to have any chance of winning.

"Tyranitar, protect!" The burly guy, who they now know as Chad commanded. Tyranitar leapt in front of the salamence, right into oncoming attacks and created a green barrier. He prevented all but one rock from the rock blast from getting to Salamence.

"Metagross, meteor mash! Protect Salamence!" the nerdy looking kid shouted in his squeaky before-puberty voice. Metagross rose up surprisingly fast and completely obliterated the rock.

This went on for a couple of minutes, and the salamence didn't do anything except for dance, while her opponents tried, in vain, to reach her, as she was protected very well by her two teammates.

After she seemed satisfied with the amount of power Salamence had gained, Marla commanded "Now use outrage!"

The battle was over in seconds.

Any pokemon that even got scratched by Salamence instantly fainted, and the announcer declared them as the winners.

"Well, that was exciting," said Ash as he got up to get ready for his battle. He gave Serena a light kiss on the forehead, and said "You just wait right here for me to come back, 'kay?"

Serena nodded, and watched Ash leave with Clemont and Riley.

The announcer started talking again, and tried his best to entertain the crowd. Serena actually thought that his monologue was quite boring and zoned out. When she came back to reality, Ash, Clemont and Riley were standing on one side, and three other trainers were on the other side of the field. She realized she didn't hear what Ash's opponent's names were, and decided that she needed to pay more attention to this kind of stuff. Ash already called out his honedge, Clemont his heliolisk and Riley his lucario. She glanced over at the other side of the field, and observed a dragon-fly like pokemon, a bull-like pokemon, and a rhyhorn, which she recognized.

"Wow! A Yanmega!" Dawn cried. "That brings back so many memories!" she went on the pull out her own pokedex and scanned the rhyhorn and the other pokemon, which Serena learned was called tauros. She refocused and tried to concentrate on the battle, and she couldn't help but marvel at how handsome Ash looked as he battled. She didn't let anything-not even Bonnie- distract her…

"Rhyhorn use take down!" Ash heard one of his opponents call.

"Go in front of heliolisk." Ash calmly told honedge. The sword pokemon obeyed, and instead of hitting heliolisk, the intended target, Rhyhorn found itself crashing into honedge, and dealt no damage as ghost types do not take damage from normal typed moves.

"Force palm!" Riley shouted and Lucario immediately counterattacked and hit the rhyhorn.

"Help rhyhorn out! Use strength!" Tauros' trainer called. Tauros began to charge towards Lucario, but Clemont intervened and said "Use surf!"

Heliolisk launched a large tidal wave towards his opponent, and swept Tauros off it's feet. It hit the ground hard, and struggled to stand up.

"Yanmega, our friends need help, use ancient power!" the final trainer commanded.

Yanmega created rocks surrounded by blue energy and launched them, hitting both Lucario and heliolisk, but dealing considerably more damage to the latter. Then it's body started to glow green, signaling that it's ability speed boost had activated.

Seeing that the tauros was already weakened by the surf, Ash commanded honedge to use iron head on it. Honedge smashed itself into tauros, sending it flying, and when tauros landed, it had swirls for eyes.

"Tauros is unable to battle!" the referee cried as a very disappointed trainer returned his beloved pokemon.

"Don't let them get away with that! Rhyhorn, use retaliate!" he yelled as rhyhorn ferociously attacked heliolisk, causing it to faint.

"Heliolisk is unable to battle!" the referee declared.

Clemont sighed and returned his pokemon. "Sorry guys, this is all up to you!" he said.

"No problem!" Ash said, "Honedge, use swords dance!" Honedge began to dance in a way that caused the audience to clap in approval.

"Yanmega, use air slash!" Yanmega's trainer called out, and it launched a blade of air at Lucario.

Lucario simply leapt out of the way, as Riley shouted "Use aura sphere!"

Lucario launched a large aura sphere at rhyhorn. It was super effective, and when the dust settled down, rhyhorn had fainted.

"Rhyhorn is unable to battle!" the referee said, seeming bored.

"Yes, we have the advantage!" Ash thought in his mind and called "Honedge, use swords dance again!"

"Lucario use aura sphere!" Riley said.

"Protect," yanmega's trainer called calmly.

Yanmega was surrounded by a ball of green light, and it easily absorbed the aura sphere. After the protective barrier fell, it's body started to glow green again.

"Bone rush!" Riley called, as Honedge continued to dance, oblivious to all of it's surroundings. Lucario created a blue rod of auric energy, gracefully jumped into the air, swinging wildly, in hoped of hitting yanmega.

Yanmega, due to it's increased speed, easily outmaneuvered the attack and let it's body rise up with the wind, making it impossible to hit from the ground with a physical attack.

On and on it went, with Yanmega dodging Lucario's attacks, and Honedge and Lucario dodging Yanmega's attacks. The audience clearly was getting impatient, and it was evident that Ash shared the feeling. Then he got an idea.

"Get ready…" Ash warned Riley. Riley didn't get a chance to react before Ash cried "Use shadow sneak on Lucario!"

"W-what are you doing!?" Riley asked, completely shocked. Honedge melt into Lucario's shadow, and reappeared right under Lucario.

"Now iron head!" Ash cried. Honedge smashed Lucario, and sent him flying towards Yanmega. Yanmega and it's trainer both looked at Lucario and Honedge in amusement.

"Shadow sneak on Yanmega now!" Ash cried again, and Honedge melted into Yanmega's shadow. He reappeared just as Lucario reached Yanmega. Honedge flew into Lucario's hand, and out of reflex, Lucario swung him like the club he creates when using bone rush.

"Shadow claw!" Ash shouted and Honedge started to glow a foul looking black color. Honedge connected with Yanmega, and caused it to lose altitude and plummet to the ground. Upon hitting the ground, Yanmega let out a weak "Yan…" and fainted.

"Yanmega is unable to battle, which means that the winners are Ash, Clemont and Riley!" the referee declared, and caused the whole stadium to burst out in excitement.

"Yes!" Serena and Dawn declared up on the bleachers. This caused people around them to look at them in a funny way.

Ash, Clemont and Riley left the field with wide smiles on their faces. They met up with their friends up on the seats, and settled down.

"You were great!" Serena cried, as she pulled Ash into a hug, which he returned, wholeheartedly.

"So… we don't have any more battles we absolutely have to attend until late in the afternoon. How about we go do something now and come back later?" Calem suggested.

"So Ash, why did you attack Lucario?" Dawn asked, thoroughly confused, but knowing that he had some weird reason for doing such strange things.

As if on cue, Ash's stomach grumbled, causing him to grin sheepishly and scratch his head.

"Heh heh, I'm kinda hungry, Let's go get something to eat, and I'll tell you after lunch!" Ash said, causing everyone to chuckle in amusement, and Serena to playfully hit him again.

Moments later, the group had settled down in a restaurant, the group sat down at a large round table made for ten and waited for the waiter/waitress to come. After the waitress took their orders, she went off to tell the chef, who was waiting.

"So can you tell us why you attacked Lucario now?" Bonnie asked, equally curious as Dawn

"Well you see, we couldn't hit yanmega with anything, and he couldn't hit us, but the battle was going no where. I needed something that would distract Yanmega and it's trainer, so I can hit him with a plus six shadow sneak." He explained. "So I knocked Lucario into the air with an iron head, knowing that it would only slightly hurt him, since it is resistant by both Lucario's typings. I knew if I could get one attack to hit yanmega, it would cause it to faint, since I had set up so many swords dances. It turned out to work out much better than I expected, and it looked stylish too!"

"Wow, I couldn't believe all that went through your head in such a short amount of time!" Serena said, staring at Ash with admiration in her eyes, and caused him to blush.

"Yeah, Ash never ceases to amaze you with his intricate battle strategies." Dawn added.

"Yeah, the swords dances really helped, or else the yanmega would not have fainted to one hit." Trevor added, sounding extremely nerdy.

Then the group settled down, and enjoyed their wonderful lunch that the waitress had brought them.

So did you like it? Please tell me so I can make it better.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Ok, so I know the first few chapters in this story are shorter, and feel a little more rushed, so I am going to try to fix them in the next few days. If you are interested, great, but if not, that's ok too, I just wanted to let you guys know that that's going to be there in a couple of days.

Also, I realized I didn't give you some information:

Calem: 16

Tierno: 16

Trevor: 15

Shauna: 14

I don't own pokemon.

After eating a wonderful lunch, the group headed back towards the stadium, to wait for Serena, Dawn and Shauna's battle. Upon arriving, the three girls went off to get ready for the battle, and everyone else headed towards the seat section.

"Oh, this is going to be exciting, isn't it? This is going to be Serena's first time battling with her goodra!" Ash said to Pikachu, who let out a "Pika!" in agreement.

"Next up we have Shauna, Serena and Dawn, who will be battling against Jim, Cas and Reese!" the announcer announced with enthusiasm. Ash didn't recognize the pictures of the other three trainers, so he decided that they might not be the best trainers. They did, however, look like they were part of a gang.

"Go Greninja!" Shauna said, and tossed her pokeball onto the field, releasing a dark-blue pokemon that looked, well, like a ninja.

"You too Goodra!" Serena said, and released Goodra from her ball.

"Goooooo" she cooed, happy to see that she will be battling, but not under the strict commands of Paul. She wanted to show off how strong she had gotten from training with him though.

"Togekiss spooootlight!" Dawn said as she tossed her pokeball skywards. Upon opening, the ball released beautiful flower petals, which gently fell to the ground, leaving a white winged pokemon in the air.

Ash chuckled. "She still can't resist not using seals, even though this isn't a contest." Ash said to no one in particular, but caused several people around them to stare at Ash.

Their opponents had released a krookadile, a machamp, and to Serena's horror, a drapion.

Upon laying her eyes on the drapion, Serena let out a small scream, and hugged her head, as if she had a headache.

"W-what's wrong with Serena?" Shauna asked, which seemed to be the general question that the audience wants answered.

"Listen, we have to work together, and take out that drapion as fast as we can. Serena had a… bad experience with one of those. If we don't take it out quick, then this will be more of a 2 on 3 battle, to our disadvantage." Dawn whispered to Shauna.

Shauna nodded, completely understanding and she trusted Dawn, who seemed to have plenty of battle experience. "Alright! Greninja, start off with a water shuriken!" She shouted loudly on purpose, then whispered to her pokemon "on drapion."

Greninja began creating sharp shurikens out of water, and launched them all simultaneously at drapion.

"Hmph! That won't scare us! Krookodile use protect!" Jim commanded, and then gasped in shock as the flying shurikens hit drapion instead of krookodile, causing the giant scorpion pokemon to flinch in pain.

"Now Togekiss, use air slash!" Dawn exclaimed, and Togekiss sent a massive blade of air towards her opponents.

"This is our turn! Use protect too!" Reese cried, but also was shocked when the air collided with drapion, instead of machamp, knocking it to the ground.

"Hmm, these trainers are targeting drapion, instead of going for super effective moves, I wonder why…" Cas thought, but immediately became violent and angry.

"Drapion is unable to battle!" came the announcement when the referee saw drapion lying on the ground, unconscious with swirls instead of his regular beady eyes.

"What is wrong with you two? I didn't even get to call a move and my drapion has fainted!" Cas raged.

"Sorry, it's just that they are making really unexpected moves…" Jim explained. "We really thought they were targeting our pokemon…"

Meanwhile, on the other side of the field, Dawn tried to comfort Serena. "It's ok, the drapion's gone, nothing will hurt you. If it makes you feel any better, I'm deathly scared of ariados, and everyone is scared of something…" Dawn soothed Serena.

"T-thanks…" Serena said as she took up and wiped the stray tears away from her face. She didn't want to act weak in front of Ash, but she just panicked when she saw the drapion form across the field.

"Sheesh, what happened between you and a drapion?" Shauna asked, but stopped pressing for an answer when she saw Dawn glaring at her with an enraged look.

"I-I don't want to talk about it…" Serena said, struggling not to start crying again. The sudden spasms of pain haven't come back for a while now, but she still was scared to death by those pokemon, and she knew she was probably going to have nightmares for days after this. At least she'll be with Ash.

"Maybe you can tell her another time, right now, we still have a battle to win!" Dawn told Serena in a tranquil voice.

"Right. Goodra, use dragon pulse!" Goodra charged up energy around her mouth and launched it towards the Machamp. The energy overwhelmed it and sent it flying into the wall behind Jim, Cas and Reese. Of course, Machamp, as strong as it is, couldn't survive a hit like that.

"Maa…" it groaned, eyes spinning like a spinda's.

"Machamp is unable to battle!" the referee said shakily, but trying hard not to let it show.

Everyone, including Serena, was shocked at the power that Goodra possessed.

"Wow, Paul must've trained her a lot for it to be that strong!" Ash thought back on the bleachers. That attack had jolted him back to reality after worrying for Serena and her fear for drapions.

Jim, who had finally snapped out of his trance, decided that he did not want to get swept, and called "Krookodile use foul play!" and krookodile reacted, beating Greninja to a pulp, leaving it barely standing.

"Greninja!" Shauna cried in concern but the frog pokemon silenced her and slowly got up.

"Togekiss, use aura sphere now!" Dawn shouted and Togekiss launched a ball of blue energy at the krookodile.

"Dragon claw!" Jim commanded, and Krookodile's claws began to glow as it tore through the aura sphere.

"Goodra, use ice beam!" Serena told her pokemon.

"You too! Use water shuriken!" Shauna called.

Both attacks were launched at Krookodile, as he frantically tried to avoid them. After moving out of the way of the water shurikens, he accidentally walked into the ice beam, freezing Krookodile into a solid block of ice, and dealing immense damage.

"Kroo!" it cried, before it's snout froze.

"Finish it Togekiss! Use tri attack!" Togekiss launched three balls of energy, one red, one blue, and one yellow, at the frozen krookodile. The balls of energy punched through the ice, knocking Krookodile out, and leaving his eyes swirling.

"Krookodile is unable to battle, which means the winners are Shauna, Serena and Dawn!" the announcer cried, causing the entire stadium to cheer loudly.

After leaving the arena and going back to their friends, Ash pulled Serena into a hug.

"Hey, don't worry about it too much, not all drapion want to hurt you… you don't have to be afraid of them…" Ash said in a reassuring voice.

"I-I know… it's just… when I saw it… I-I-I just panicked… and I…" her voice wavered and she almost started crying again. She buried her face into Ash's chest, so no one would see her cry.

"It's ok…." Said Ash while stroking Serena's hair, "You won't be scared of them soon, you'll realize that drapion was doing exactly what it's trainer told it to do… not all drapion are bad…"

"Umm… how about we leave to get ready for our match?" Calem suggested while pulling Tierno and Trevor away, towards the arena entrance.

"Hey, at least we won!" Dawn chirped, trying to cheer Serena up. "Who knew that goodra had so much power?! This is your first time battling with her too!"

Serena blushed, and Ash said "well it must be because Paul trained it well…" and trailed off, clenching his free hand into a fist.

Serena sat down with Ash beside her. She tried not to think too much about the drapion, and tried to enjoy the match, the only match of the day, where she could watch with Ash. She got her case of Pecha berries out, and ate one out of nervousness…

"Hey, why don't you stop eating food that's meant for pokemon?" a snobby voice said behind them.

Riley calmly turned around; a rich boy with a sideways smirk sitting behind them was mocking Serena because she was eating berries! He was surrounded by three burly looking people that looked like some weird cross between a boufalant and a snorlax. "If those berries are only for pokemon, then can you please explain to me why you're drinking a sitrus berry smoothie?" Riley asked.

He gave his cup a glance. "Uh… these drinks are meant for people, the berries are to help pokemon in battle! Everybody knows that! Only a stupid fool would eat those when they can give them to thei-" and he was interrupted when Ash turned around and swung his fist surrounded by his blue aura at the boy. His fist nailed him in the nose, causing blood to fly out and land on the ground. "No one… makes fun of… her." Ash said, with anger in his voice. His three burly companions got up and surrounded Ash. "Beeth dem up weel good!" the rich boy said, trying to stop the bleeding him his nose.

"No stop! Don't do this!" Serena pleaded while tugging on the arm of one of the bullies.

At first, Ash held his own. Then a punch across the face from on the men took Ash down and he fell.

"No!" Serena cried. Luckily, Riley came to the rescue by fiercely striking the three men at their nerve points, causing all of them to faint.

"Mwat? Nobody messes wif me an gets ahway wif it!" called the rich boy as he ran out of the stadium, his nose still bleeding. "I'm goig back to Coumarine City to fineg my gwampa!"

Serena lifted Ash off of the floor. "Ash, are you alright?" she asked with concern.

Minutes later, Ash regained consciousness, and smiled up and Serena.

"Please, don't do any more things like that, it's ok if he wants to make fun of me… it's not worth letting you get hurt over it. Serena said as she stroked the bruise on Ash's face, causing him to wince.

"O-ok, no more of that…" Ash said and chuckled slightly. Then he got up and rejoined Serena, rubbing his bruised cheek. He was just able to see Calem call out his Chesnaught, and it stood next to Raichu and Crawdaunt. He didn't get to hear their opponent's names, but on the other side of the field stood a sawsbuck, a gliscor, and an agron.

Serena was enjoying sitting next to Ash. She leaned against him and rested her head on Ash's shoulder, and felt her eyelids get heavy. She hadn't noticed how tired she felt, and before long, she started sleeping.

"-And the winners are Calem, Tierno and Trevor!" Serena jolted awake, to find the announcer concluding the battle. "I must've fallen asleep…" Serena thought. She saw that only Chesnaught was left standing on the field, albeit being severely bruised and unable to keep his balance. On the other side of the field, a disappointed trainer was just returning his gliscor, which had blood on his chest and claws. She assumed that Crawdaunt, Raichu, and the other two pokemon that she wasn't quite familier with had fainted.

"Wow! That was so close!" Dawn exclaimed.

"Yeah, that could have gone either way! I was surprised that Calem was able to pull through after all that damage dealt to Chesnaught!" Clemont added.

"Ooh, this is soooo exciting!" said Bonnie, who happily began to jump around on her seat.

"W-what happened? I kinda fell asleep, and missed the actual battle…" Serena asked sheepishly.

"Well, Chesnaught was badly injured, and their opponents almost won, but at the last second, Calem told Chesnaught to use spiky shield, and it caused the opponents gliscor to take damage, instead of landing the winning x-scissor, so they won!" Ash explained, although Serena (who was still kind of drowsy) didn't hear, or understand, much of it. She didn't want to ruin the mood though, and faked understanding. "Wow that is pretty cool!" She exclaimed with a fake grin on her face.

They then got up and left to go congratulate Calem, who was happy to receive so much attention and praise.

After eating a big celebratory meal for dinner, everyone decided to call it a day, and retire to their rooms. Ash, who was feeling extremely tired, instantly fell asleep when they got into bed. Serena, however, was not drowsy anymore, and found that she couldn't fall asleep. So she laid next to Ash, resting her head on his bare chest, and listened to his heartbeat. The consistent rhythm finally caused her to become sleepy, and she fell asleep, knowing that tomorrow was going to be a big day for everyone.

In the morning, Ash and Serena woke up, kissed a couple of times, and went to go have breakfast. When they got there, they found that Calem was not with everyone.

"Is Calem still sleeping?" Asked Ash, hoping that everyone was not only waiting for him and Serena, but also Calem.

"No, he woke up early, ate breakfast, and went to the stadium already to check the matchups for today." Shauna replied while drinking a glass of Rawst juice.

"Why do you like that drink?" Bonnie asked, clearly disgusted. "That stuff's gross!"

Shauna shrugged. "I don't know, I'm just different, I guess."

"You sure are…" Bonnie muttered under her breath, she then went back to grooming Dedenne.

Ash and Serena were just settling down to enjoy breakfast, when Calem ran in the pokemon center, panting from running all the way back.

"Guys! *pant pant* I've got *pant pant* bad news!" Trevor handed him a glass of water, and after drinking it, he calmed down a little bit. "You know those three trainers that completely trashed their opponent's right before Ash's battle?" everyone nodded.

"Well, we have to face them!"

So did you guys enjoy this chapter? Please tell me!


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Hello everyone, sorry I wasn't posting chapters for a week, but I was (again) kind of busy, I will try to keep posting chapters as fast as I can, but it might take a little longer now than before. I know the chapters aren't even that long, but I have been finding it troublesome to find free time to write. So please keep this in mind. With that said, this is the new chapter!

I don't own pokemon

"What?" Ash asked, but silently, he was glad that Calem would most likely be knocked out. He wasn't sure that his team would be able to beat Calem's. On the other hand, he wasn't sure if he could beat those other three trainers either, so he decided that it was sort of a win-win situation, and also a lose-lose situation.

"You heard me. The way they battle, I don't think we can beat them. We are kinda screwed." Calem said.

"It's ok, just find a way to take out Marla's Salamence, and you'll be fine, those other two play defensive roles anyway! Salamence is the only threat." Shauna said.

"Yea, we can't stay on the defensive, so your spiky shield thing won't work very well." Tierno added.

"We can always try, and at least we won't be knocked out by some weak trainers… There is no shame in losing to the tournament champions…" Trevor said, clearly not believing that they could win.

"Also, they might not even use the same strategy they did last time, because everyone already saw them use it, so be careful. Don't underestimate Metagross or Tyranitar, they are both extremely strong pokemon." Dawn advised.

"Hey, let's stop thinking about it, and head towards the stadium. We could all get ready." Riley suggested.

The group made their way to the stadium, and Calem, Tierno and Trevor left to go get ready.

By the time Ash and his friends found seats, the battle was already starting. Chesnaught, Raichu and Crawdaunt stood on one side, while Tyranitar, Metagross and Salamence stood on the other. The referee signaled the battle to begin.

"Raichu, thunderbolt on Salamence!" Trevor called.

"Crawdaunt, crabhammer on Salamence!" Tierno commanded.

"Chesnaught, use leech seed on Salamence!" Calem exclaimed.

Ash couldn't really see the expressions on their opponents faces, but he could swear that Sheldon and Chad smiled. Instead of blocking the attacks like they did in the first battle, they let the attacks go past them this time.

At the last second, Marla shouted "Salamence, fly!" and Salamence obeyed immediately, soaring into the blue sky right before the attacks reached her. The attacks flew past her, and Crawdaunt, along with the other two attacks, crashed into the wall. Instead of hitting Salamence, the two attacks hit Crawdaunt instead.

"Earthquake!" Chad and Sheldon simultaneously shouted, and the ground trembled because of both the powerful attacks. Raichu immediately fainted, and Crawdaunt was brought to one knee. Even Metagross and Tyranitar didn't look too good because they had also been affected by the Earthquake. The only ones that still seemed fine were Chesnaught, who resisted the attacks, and Salamence, who was in the air.

Then, a bolt of blue and red shot out of the sky, and Salamence fell through the atmosphere like a bullet, hitting Crawdaunt in the chest with maximum force, combined with the earthquake, leech seed and thunderbolt, this was enough to take out the Crawdaunt for good.

Calem gritted his teeth. He didn't expect this battle to be that hard. "Wood hammer!" he shouted and Chesnaught sprang towards the nearest target, the Tyranitar, and hit it hard, taking it out. He didn't even let the referee announce the fainted pokemon, he knew he couldn't waste a moment of time.

"Raichu, Crawdaunt and Tyranitar are all unable to battle!" the referee finally announced.

"Rahh!" Chad cried, causing everyone in the stadium to flinch in fear, because he could be pretty scary when he was upset.

"Eep!" cried an alarmed Serena and immediately dove into Ash's arms, causing him to giggle.

"He can't do anything to you when you are way up here…." Ash told her.

"Uh… I was just surprised… heh heh…" said Serena sheepishly.

"Metagross, meteor mash!" Sheldon called.

"Salamence, use fly again," Marla told her pokemon.

"Counter attack with wood hammer!" Calem said, and Chesnaught collided with Metagross in midair, and eventually overpowered Metagross, smashing it to the ground, causing it to faint.

"Metagross is unable to battle!" the announcer declared.

Calem smirked. He was confident that in a one on one battle, Chesnaught could beat almost any pokemon. He liked playing the hero because it makes him look THAT much cooler.

Just then, Salamence flew down towards Chesnaught, trying to take him by surprise, but Calem was expecting it, and told Chesnaught to use spiky shield. Salamence collided with the shield, and screamed in pain.

"Grr, Salamence, stay at a distance and use flamethrower!" Marla called.

The battle raged on for a few more minutes, with Salamence flying far away from the ground, and eventually, Chesnaught grew too tired to put up another spiky shield.

"Fly!" Marla said triumphantly.

Salamence dove towards Chesnaught, hit him square in the chest, and knocked him out.

"Chess….." the injured pokemon said weakly.

"Chesnaught is unable to battle, which means that the winners are Marla, Chad and Sheldon!" the referee announced.

"Wow, using those earthquakes were a risky move, but I guess it paid off in the end…" Clemont said.

"Yeah, poor Calem, he was so close…." Shauna said, with a hint of sadness in her voice.

"And the way Marla kept her Salamence so far away from Chesnaught, tiring him out, that was genius!" Ash exclaimed, eyes glowing in admiration. "Maybe I can work that into my strategy for Fletchinder!"

Serena instantly felt jealous. She knew she shouldn't be, but she wished that she was as good of a battler as Marla. Then Ash would probably like her even more.

"Well, it's almost time for our battle," Ash said, giving Clemont a gentle punch on the shoulder. "We'd better go get ready."

Clemont nodded, and they got up to prepare for their battle.

Calem, Tierno, and Trevor just got back to the rest of group when Serena finally realized that Ash was gone. She wasn't very worried this time, because she saw that Clemont and Riley were also gone. "He must've left for his battle…" she thought.

"Hey it's alright…" Shauna said, comforting a very upset Calem. "Remember, everyone in the audience were betting on Marla's team to win, so you guys did good." "Even I thought that they would win…" she secretly thought, but didn't say it out loud, because that would probably make Calem hate her.

Meanwhile, Tierno and Trevor recovered from their loss and settled in to watch Ash's match.

"Alright, honedge use swords dance!" Ash cried as soon as the referee started the battle. He wanted to start this battle off with a good start. His opponents, triplets whose names were Mia (with green hair), Tia (with blue hair) and Rhia (with red hair). The announcer also said that they were triplets, and they were using a semisage, a semipour, and a semisear.

"Don't let him set up for free, use flamethrower semisear!" Rhia said.

The flames hit the tip of Honedge, causing it to glow white.

"Heliolisk, parabolic charge!" and Heliolisk stored up energy and ran towards the semipour.

"Energy ball!" Mia commanded, and semisage launched a glowing green sphere at the charging heliolisk. Upon reaching the target, the ball exploded, causing Heliolisk damage, but not stopping his attack. Heliolisk crashed into the semipour, dealing large amounts of damage and recovering back some of his lost health.

"Semipour, get up and use scald!" Tia told her pokemon, and semipour spewed boiling hot water towards Lucario, hoping to burn it. Lucario nimbly jumped out of the way, as Riley commanded him to use aura sphere. He launched the blue ball of energy at semipour, hitting her hard and knocking her out.

"Semipour!" Tia yelled in concern.

"Semipour is unable to battle!" the referee announced.

Ash noticed that Honedge's tip still glowed white from hot he flamethrower attack, and decided to try something different. "Oh boy, one more of my crazy strategies…." He thought.

"Shadow claw on the semisage!" he cried, and Honedge's body started to glow a shade of dark purple, as he charged towards semisage.

"Watch out," Rhia warned her triplet.

"Don't worry, semisage can easily take one of those." Mia replied, but yelped in shock when Semisage fainted from the attack.

"Semisage is unable to battle!"

"H-how did that happen?" Mia wondered out loud.

"Well, thanks to the previous flamethrower, Honedge's blade still glows white hot. When it hit your pokemon with a shadow claw, the heat from the blade made the attack feel like a fire-type attack, as well as a ghost type attack. It fooled your semisage into thinking it received more damage than it actually did, and so that's why it fainted." Ash explained across the field with a smug look on his face.

"Wow! I didn't know that my opponent was sooooooo smart!" Tia exclaimed, hearts in her eyes.

On the bleachers, Serena growled at Tia's expression. Dawn noticed this, and whispered to Serena "You know, Ash wouldn't be that type of person, so you won't have to worry about your relationship… if you don't even trust him that much, you can break up with him. I mean, no offence, but I would be actually happy if you did because there are other people who wish they could be with him, you know" Dawn reminded Serena.

Serena's expression immediately softened, Dawn was right, and she realized that she kept getting jealous, even thought she had no right to be jealous, and felt bad again. She sighed and shook her head to clear her thoughts, and returned to watching the battle.

"Semisear use fire blast!" Rhia called and Semisear launched a long column of fire towards Lucario, who wasn't able to get away in time. The attack resulted in a fainted Lucario, with several second and third degree burns.

"Lucario is unable to battle!" droned the voice of the referee, which Ash had learned to not listen to.

Riley emotionlessly returned Lucario, and stepped back to watch the rest of the battle unfold.

"Nice job Lucario… I'll get you healed as soon as possible…" Riley muttered, his voice barely above a whisper level.

"Heliolisk, surf!" Clemont called and a large wave of water crashed into semisear.

"Semi!" the pokemon cried, clearly not happy with getting hit by that last attack.

"Fire blast!" Rhia commanded, and the semisear launched a large column of flames towards heliolisk. Knowing that he could not avoid the attack, Heliolisk winced and braced himself for the attack. Unfortunately for Clemont, Heliolisk wasn't able to take the attack very well, and fainted.

"Heliolisk is unable to battle!"

Rhia smirked. "Talk about a comeback…." She thought. Then she realized that the honedge was nowhere to be seen. Semisear and everyone in the stadium were all equally confused, because honedge seemed to just disappear! After frantically searching the entire stadium, Semisear finally looked down and saw a green eye staring at him from his shadow. He suddenly realized that this was honedge, but it was too late.

"Shadow sneak!" Ash cried triumphantly, clearly happy that he had taken advantage of the situation by commanding honedge with his aura.

Honedge materialized out of the shadow and slashed in an uppercut motion. Semisear, being already weak, easily fell to the attack.

"Semisear is unable to battle, which means that the winner is Ash, Clemont and Riley!" the ref announced.

"Ugh…. So close…. Yet so far…." Rhia groaned and the three triplets left the stadium unhappily.

Ash gave Clemont a high five before leaving the stadium, and going back to their awaiting friends.

"Wow, that was amazing!" Dawn cried when Ash, Clemont and Riley got back.

The group was wondering what to do next, when Shauna spoke up.

"Since we still have time before our battle, how about we go shopping!" Shauna suggested. This led to cheers by Dawn, Serena and Bonnie, and groans from everyone else.

"Here's an idea, how about you four go shopping, and we'll just go relax in the pokemon center?" Calem suggested.

Seeing as this was the best compromise, everyone agreed, and the group split up.

About an hour and a half later…

"C'mon!" Bonnie cried, dragging Dawn along to catch up with Serena and Shauna who had ran up ahead. Dawn, who had been buying the most things, was moving slower than the others, but, she was still equally excited. As the group rounded a corner, they saw two groups in the middle of an intense fight; they had walked right into the middle of a warzone.

One side was wearing red uniforms, had weird looking hair, and were using all sorts of fire type pokemon, and the other side, they recognized as Team Rocket.

"Umm…. How about we get out of here?" Shauna suggested, but it was more of a command. As the group retreated, the shrapnel from a magnemite's mirror shot flew towards them and created a gash across Serena's left arm.

"Serena!" Dawn gasped in shock. "Come on, we need to get you to the pokemon center!" and they started towards the center, while Serena tried to stop the bleeding in her arm. They could still hear cries of pain and explosions happen behind them as they ran away.

Meanwhile in Unova…..

Officer Jenny was busy riding on her motorcycle, patrolling neighborhoods and preventing crime. Suddenly, the front wheel on her bike got deflated, and Jenny heard a gun sound. She fell off the bike and hit the ground hard.

"Ugh…" she said as she slowly got up, only to get grabbed by some men.

"Get the chloroform," she heard one person say. They pressed a damp piece of cloth to her mouth and nose, and Jenny was just able to make out the black colored uniforms with a large red "R" on their chests before slipping away into unconsciousness.

This is one of the situations that is happening to Officer Jenny's all over the world.

Back to the Kalos region…

"Another Sitrus berry smoothie please…" Ash said to the cashier and pressed some money onto the counter. The cashier refilled Ash's drink, and Ash returned to his friends, who were watching a NPA sports game (the National Pokeball Association). They had been relaxing and watching television for the past hour or so. Just then, four girls ran past him towards Nurse Joy. "That's Serena!" Ash thought as he turned to look at them.

"What happened?" Ash asked breathlessly when he caught up with them.

"We were caught in between a fight with Team Rocket and this other group." Bonnie explained, a hint of sorrow in her voice. "Serena got hit by an attack. It bled a lot so we came here."

"I'll be okay…" Serena assured Ash, but he could tell that she was weak from losing a lot of blood.

"Please follow me, we need to act quickly so your wound doesn't get infected." Nurse Joy said, urging Serena to follow her. Ash tried to follow Serena, but he was stopped by Dawn.

"She'll be fine, don't worry!" Shauna told him as she gave him a reassuring slap on the back.

"Okay…" said Ash, returning to his other friends to watch the game. "Will she be well enough to participate in her battle?" he thought with a worried expression.

In Geosenge Town….

Eldritch(Paul) was very pleased. Not only did Lance start the removal of police officers in other regions, but he was also able to engage Team Flare in a battle in Lumiose City. Those fools left their base in Geosenge town to fight his grunts. He was able to sneak in, and quickly dispose of the remaining guards inside the building. Soon, there will be even less people in Kalos that can interfere his goals. He hoped that there would not be too many casualties in their little brush with Team Flare in Lumiose City.

As he flew away on Honchkrow, he stared at the pokeball in his hands. Then, he got out his phone and called Jessie and James.

"Retreat, disengage from Team Flare, the operation is over! Meet me in Coumarine City." He could make out a faint "Yes Sir!" from the other side of the phone, signally that at least Jessie OR James survived the fight, and he ended the call. His planning had been worth it, his first step has been accomplished. Soon, he'll be able to overthrow Giovanni from power, and he, along with Lance, would be the new leaders on Team Rocket, and no one would be able to stand up to them. He cackled in an evil manner for several minutes.

"Finally…. Yvetel, you are mine!"

So how did you guys like it? Please leave a comment or something to let me know how well you think I did.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Ok… I realize that I have not updated in a while, but that's because I have been busy lately, and did not feel like writing when I could be doing other things (like sleeping). I kind of put this chapter together rather quickly, so I think that, yes, I could have done better. Anyway, enjoy this chapter.

I don't own pokemon

Serena woke up in a hospital bed feeling a large amount of pain at her chest. She gasped in recognition, as she fumbled around the table next to her, trying desperately to get to the pouch that contained her pecha berries. She barely noticed Ash walk in, who ran to her side and got the pouch out for her. She gasped in relief as the berry went down her throat and the pain started to go away.

"Wow, good thing you fainted early enough, if you passed out in the middle of the tournament, that would have been worse." Ash said.

"Whuh… wha?" she asked.

Ash rolled his eyes. "You passed out six hours ago, so Nurse Joy brought you here to treat your face, but you missed your match. Don't worry though!" he quickly added when he saw that Serena was about to interrupt him. "Dawn told the tournament director, and he allowed Dawn and Shauna to battle, and could even bring your goodra with them, since technically they are only using registered pokemon. Dawn is amazing, and goodra listened to her too, so you guys will be moving on to tomorrows battle."

"W-wow… Ok…." Serena muttered.

"Now you rest, I'll leave the berry pouch closer, so you can reach it better if you need to." Ash said while yawning. "I'm going to go get some sleep…." And he walked out of the room.

Serena checked the clock, and knew that dinner had been a few hours ago, and since everyone was probably asleep, she would have to wait until morning. Her stomach told her otherwise. She tried to fight the hunger by going to sleep, but no matter what she tried, she just couldn't fall asleep. So, having nothing else to do, she got up and went to the kitchen.

In the kitchen, she found a refrigerator labelled "for public use", and got some cooking things out of it. She started to bake, not realizing what she was making, since she was deep in thought, but soon, she realized that she had just baked a batch of cookies.

"Oh well, better than nothing…" she said as she took the cookies out to cool. After eating a satisfactory amount, Serena got out a little bag, and put the leftovers into it. "I'll bet Ash would like these…." She thought. Then, she cleaned up and went to brush her teeth.

After getting ready for bed, Serena realized that she didn't want to go back to her own hospital bed to sleep. She felt fine anyway. She went to the front desk and checked Nurse Joy's room rental book. "Room 018" she branded into her brain and returned the book to it's original location. "Ok, so Ash didn't change rooms since yesterday. At least I checked so I wouldn't go into a room where some stranger slept. "Looking up, Serena saw a pair of glowing red eyes from outside the pokemon center.

"Meep!" she cried in alarm.

The pokemon scurried away before she could get another good look at it.

Grateful that the center was locked, Serena headed down the hall to room 018. She opened the door, and heard Ash snoring lightly. She quietly giggled, and changed into her pajamas. Then she got into bed and snuggled up with Ash's chest, and fell asleep immediately.

Ash woke up with a smile on his face and Serena sleeping happily on his chest. Wait… Serena? He blinked to make sure he wasn't seeing things, but Serena was-in fact- lying on his chest.

"Serena, time to wake up…." He said in a playful voice.

Serena's eyes blinked open, and she smiled. "Good morning Ash!" she chirped.

"Why aren't you in your room?" Ash asked.

"Well, I got a little hungry, so I got up to make some food. Then I decided to come here to sleep with you." She got up to get dressed. "Speaking of food, I have something to give you!" she sang, then handed Ash the little pouch with her cookies in it.

"Hey thanks!" he said as he popped one into his mouth.

"Mmmmm…. Really tasty!" he exclaimed as he continued to eat them.

"Well let's go get breakfast, we still have that tournament to finish…" Serena reminded him.

"Yeah ok…" Ash muttered as he got out of bed.

Moments later….

"Hey Serena, do you feel better?" Bonnie asked as the couple walked into the dining area.

"Yeah, I-I think I can participate in today's battle."

Dawn's expression brightened. "Great! We're going to need you if we are going to win against Ash, Riley and Clemont!"

"Wh-wh-wha!?" Ash and Serena cried at the same time.

"It's true," confirmed Clemont. "Calem checked this morning."

Everybody laughed when Ash and Serena stood there dumbfounded.

"Oh the other thing I forgot to tell you… it's in about… oh… twelve minutes." Dawn added.

Ash wasted no time pulling Serena away from the table to go get food. They ate like mightyena, and were ready to leave in a few minutes. The group ran towards stadium, and separated into three groups, Ash, Clemont and Riley ran in one direction, Dawn, Serena, and Shauna in another, and the rest of the group scrambled away to go find seats.

Before long, the announcer declared "Welcome to the semifinal round! Both these two teams fought tooth and nail in order to get here, and today, we will see who moves on to the finals! On this side, we have Ash, Clemont and Riley, and their opponents will be Serena, Dawn and Shauna!"

"Whew… we made it!" Calem cried, as they had just reached their seats.

The trainers released their pokemon, and the referee started the battle.

"Lucario, aura sphere!" Riley exclaimed, and Lucario shot a blue auric ball at Goodra.

"Togekiss, you use aura sphere too!" Dawn cried.

"Togiiiiiii!" the white pokemon cried as the two balls of energy collided and exploded. Smoke was everywhere, and nobody could see the other side. The audience sat at the edge of their seats in anticipation.

Dawn smirked, she had just bought them some time.

"Togekiss, charge another aura sphere, but don't launch it." Dawn whispered.

"You too, use water shuriken." Shauna also whispered.

"And you, Goodra, use dragon pulse but don't launch it." Serena also said.

Riley saw flashes of blue color on the other side of the field and smirked. He whispered to Ash his idea, and Ash's face lit up.

"That's genius! Honedge, use shadow sneak." Ash cried.

"Get ready to dodge…" Clemont and Riley whispered to their pokemon.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the field, Dawn's smirk vanished as she heard Ash say something was genius on the other side of the field. She hoped that he was talking about her plan, or the fact that she used an aura spheric explosion to create smoke across the battlefield. However, knowing Ash, she assumed that this was not the case. Her only plan was to continue down her own route and hope that it is a good idea.

As the smoke cleared, Dawn ordered Togekiss to launch her attack, and so did Shauna and Serena. To their dismay, only two pokemon stood on the other side of the field. Heliolisk and Lucario had been expecting this, and nimbly dodged out of the way.

"Hey, where's honedge?" Shauna asked.

Then, honedge sprang out from Greninja's shadow, and made a long cut across the pokemon's chest. "Gre…." The pokemon cried weakly, and fell to the ground, swirls for eyes.

"Greninja is unable to battle!" the referee announced.

Shauna sighed in defeat and returned her pokemon. "It's all up to you guys now…"

Meanwhile, Togekiss gasped in shock as Heliolisk launched a strong bolt of lightning towards her, and when the electricity touched her body, she cried in pain and fainted.

"Togekiss!" Dawn cried as the pokemon fell towards the ground.

The white bird pokemon created a small crater in the ground and the ref cried "Togekiss is unable to battle!"

"Goodra use flamethrower!" Serena cried, and goodra shot a long column of fire at heliolisk. The pokemon was covered in flames, and fell to one knee. When the attack ended, there was a brief pause, and Heliolisk fell.

"Heliolisk is unable to battle!" the referee cried.

Clemont groaned. "Ugh… stupid dry skin…."

"Lucario, ice punch!" Riley called, and Lucario struck Goodra with a fist made of ice. Goodra cried in pain, and struggled to get up.

"Goodra use flamethrower again!" Serena commanded, and Goodra blew flames towards Lucario. He too, struggled to get back up.

"Alright, honedge, use shadow sneak!" Ash cried and Honedge sprang from Goodra's shadow, and knocked the dragon type pokemon out.

"Goodra is unable to battle, the winners are Ash, Clemont and Riley!" the referee announced, and the people in the stadium began cheering obnoxiously.

Then, Honedge began to glow a white light, and began to split in two.

"Honedge, you're evolving!" Ash cried in delight.

"Dou…." The new pokemon cried after the light faded away.

"Alright you evolved into a doublade!" Ash cried after consulting the pokedex.

When they left the stadium, everyone decided to go relax in the pokemon center and call it a day.

"You earned that…" Serena whispered to Ash as they were walking.

"Hmm, maybe, but you put up a great fight too!" Ash whispered back and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

When they got back to the center, the group played with their pokemon… ate lunch… horsed around… trained…. watched Marla's team obliterate the other team…. Serena even got to go on a quiet walk alone with Ash.

"Looks like you will have to battle Marla's team tomorrow…" Serena told Ash on the walk.

"Yeah… I guess second place isn't that bad…" Ash muttered.

Serena hit him lightly on the shoulder. "Ash Ketchum!" she scolded. "What happened to 'never give up until the end'?"

Ash chuckled and said "No, you're right, I'll try my best tomorrow. Whatever happens, happens."

Serena kissed Ash on the cheek. "That's the Ash I know and love."

Meanwhile….

Chad and Sheldon were busy celebrating their victory. Marla, however, was busy thinking about the next battle. They had used up strategies, and those would probably not work on this other boy with the red doublade. She knew that this boy was different in some way…

"Maybe I'll just have to resort with powering Salamence up with my aura…" she thought as she began to prepare dinner.

Also meanwhile….

Eldritch/Paul knew that with Yvetel, he had the power to upset Giovanni from power. However, he did not know really how strong Yvetel was.

"I need to test it somehow…" he thought as he paced around his office. Yvetel's pokeball was hidden in his desk, and no one except for his most loyal grunts knew about it.

"Hmm… I heard Ash was taking part in a tournament in Lumiose… Seems like the perfect opportunity to… surprise him."

Then he walked down the hall to get his Honchkrow.

"Oh, this will be fun."

So how was it? Good? Bad? Please let me know!


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